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Dried Lima Beans

A creamy dish of cooked lima beans seasoned with butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dried Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and cover them with fresh water.

  3. Two hours before dinner, drain and cover with boiling soft water.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes, then drain again.

Cook and finish

  1. Cover with boiling soft water, add baking soda, and boil until tender.

  2. Drain, then season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Dredge with flour, add cream, and bring to a boil.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lima beans + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dried lima beans
Form the main body of the dish once softened by soaking and boiling.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, helping the beans soften during boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the seasoned beans.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cream into a light sauce that coats the beans.
Heavy cream
Forms the creamy sauce, adding body and richness when brought to a boil.

The step that matters

Bringing the cream to a boil after adding flour. Flour must be dispersed evenly before the cream heats. Once it boils, the starch swells and thickens the sauce. Boiling too hard or too long can cause the cream to scorch or separate.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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