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Lima Beans

A stew of lima beans cooked with milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lima beans in cold water.

  2. Place the beans in a stew pan and cover with cold water.

Cook the stew

  1. Cook for 2 hours.

  2. Add salt, milk, and butter to the beans.

  3. Mix flour with a little water and add to the mixture.

  4. Simmer slowly for 30 minutes, ensuring the beans remain whole.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lima beans + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

Lima beans
Provide the main body and starchy bulk of the stew.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy, smooth texture to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat for mouthfeel and rich flavour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 30 minutes. Gentle heat keeps the beans whole. Vigorous boiling breaks down their skins and starch, and can scorch the milk on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the lima beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour. 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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