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Lima Beans

A cooked bean dish thickened with milk or cream and flour, seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell and wash the lima beans.

Cook the beans

  1. Cover the beans with boiling water and cook for about 1 hour or until tender.

  2. Let the water nearly evaporate.

Finish and serve

  1. Add milk or cream thickened with a little flour.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Boil once, and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Lima beans + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 texture of the soup once cooked tender.
Milk or cream
Adds richness, body and a smooth, mellow flavour to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream as its starch swells when heated.

The step that matters

Boil the thickened milk or cream only once. Flour thickens the dairy as its starch swells, and it needs heat to cook out its raw taste. Prolonged or vigorous boiling can cause milk or cream to scorch or separate, so bring it up once and serve.

Swap the lima beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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