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Lima Beans

Lima beans simmered with butter, pepper, salt, optional mushrooms and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the lima beans with cold water and let them soak for 1 hour.

  2. Plunge the soaked beans into boiling water and cover them.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook rapidly for about 1 hour until tender.

  2. Drain off all the water and stir in butter, pepper, and salt to taste.

  3. Add mushrooms and a little cream for improvement, if desired.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  3. Lima beans + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
Provide the starchy body of the dish, becoming tender and creamy as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the cooked beans.
Mushrooms
Add savory, earthy flavor and a meaty texture if included.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the finished beans.

The step that matters

Cook rapidly for about 1 hour until tender. Beans need sustained boiling to fully soften their starch and cell walls. Stopping too early leaves them firm and hard to digest, so check tenderness rather than relying only on the clock.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, mushroom, 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.

More lima beans recipes

Creamed 13Boiled 8Canned 8Dried 6Stewed 6Baked 3 See all 92 →

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