Name: Lima Beans
Ingredients: dried lima beans; coarse sea salt; butter; pepper; canned lima beans

Why it works: Lima beans and butter work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

If using dried beans, soak them overnight.
The next day, place the soaked beans in cold salted water and cook gently until soft.
Drain the beans, then stir in butter and pepper.
If using canned beans, place them in boiling water, then proceed as above.

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.

Lima beans + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together414 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together468 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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