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Lima Beans

A stew of lima beans cooked with salt, milk, butter, and flour, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lima beans and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lima beans in cold water.

  2. Place the beans in a stew pan and cover with cold water.

Cook the stew

  1. Cook the beans for 2 hours.

  2. Add salt, milk, butter, and flour to the beans.

  3. Let the mixture simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

  4. Ensure the beans remain whole when done.

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. Lima beans + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Young lima beans
Form the main body of the stew and hold their shape when cooked through.
Rich, sweet milk
Adds richness and a creamy, smooth body to the liquid.
Fresh butter
Adds fat, richness and flavour to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the milk and liquid, giving the stew body.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly after adding milk and flour. Once milk and flour go in, the liquid can scorch or curdle if it boils hard. A gentle simmer thickens the stew evenly and keeps the beans whole.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Lima beansthe original
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, milk, butter, 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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