Name: Lima Beans
Ingredients: 1 cup lima beans; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons cream or 1 large lump of butter

Why it works: Lima beans and cream work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 152 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Ingredients

1 cup lima beans
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
2 tablespoons cream or 1 large lump of butter

Directions

Shell and wash the lima beans.
Put the beans into boiling water with salt.
Boil until tender, then drain.
Season the beans and dress with cream or butter.
Let simmer for a few moments.

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 + creamtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together152 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lima beans: The main ingredient, giving the dish its body and starchy, tender texture.
Cream or butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the beans a smooth, silky coating.

“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.