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Lima Beans

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

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 the beans

  1. Shell the lima beans.

  2. Boil the beans in salted water until tender, about 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the beans.

Finish and serve

  1. Melt the butter in the hot milk, then stir in the flour.

  2. Add the milk mixture to the beans.

  3. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. 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 + 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 + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

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

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
Form the main body of the dish and become tender when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it coats the beans.
Hot milk
Forms the creamy liquid that turns into a light sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and hot milk. Flour added to liquid can clump if not stirred well. Blending it fully into the melted butter and milk gives a smooth, evenly thickened sauce rather than lumps.

Swap the lima beans

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

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

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