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Lima Beans Puree

A pureed dish of lima beans with salt pork, stock, onion, carrot, parsley, mace, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Lima Beans Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dried lima beans overnight.

Make the puree

  1. Boil the soaked beans with salt pork, white stock, onion, carrot, parsley, and mace until tender.

  2. Remove the pork and vegetables from the pot.

  3. Rub the beans and stock through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil, season, and add flour mixed with water to thicken.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with small toast.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Lima beans + carrottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 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

Dried lima beans
Form the bulk of the puree, giving it body and a thick, creamy texture once rubbed smooth.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when it is boiled with water, giving the puree a smooth, cohesive body.
Salt pork
Adds savoury, fatty flavour to the stock the beans cook in.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and water mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with water first and then stirred into boiling liquid, so it disperses without lumps. The starch then swells and thickens the puree as it simmers.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lima beans, pork, onion, carrot, parsley, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lima beans, pork, onion, carrot, parsley, 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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