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Lima Beans, Canned

Canned lima beans prepared by boiling beans in salted water and preserving them in sealed cans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lima beans and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lima Beans, Canned

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick over and wash the lima beans in cold water, then drain in a colander.

  2. Fill the cans with the beans and pour in enough cold water to cover them.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt for each pint of beans.

Seal and boil

  1. Seal the cans tightly with lead.

  2. Place the sealed cans in a large boiler and cover with cold water.

  3. Boil the cans for 1 hour.

  4. Remove the cans and puncture a small hole in the top of each can to release steam.

  5. Quickly reseal the cans and return them to the boiler.

  6. Boil the cans for an additional hour.

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. Lima beans + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Young lima beans
The main vegetable, which softens to a tender texture during long boiling.

The step that matters

Puncturing the cans to release steam. Steam builds up inside a sealed can while it boils. Venting releases that pressure, and quickly resealing keeps the can closed for the second hour of boiling.

“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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