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Lima Beans

A simple boiled lima bean dish seasoned with butter, pepper, and salt, garnished with boiled parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the lima beans.

Cook

  1. Boil the beans in 4 cups of water with pickled parsley and 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. Once cooked, strain off the water.

Season and serve

  1. Season the beans with butter, black pepper, and additional salt to taste.

  2. Garnish with boiled parsley.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Lima beans + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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, providing starchy bulk and a tender, creamy texture when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the beans and giving them a smooth, savoury mouthfeel.
Pickled parsley
Adds a herbal, tangy aroma that flavours the cooking water and the beans.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, 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.

More lima beans recipes

Creamed 13Boiled 8Canned 8Dried 6Stewed 6Baked 3 See all 92 →

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