Skip to main content
Salad

Lima or Kidney Bean Salad

A salad of boiled beans, green pepper, celery, onion, and nuts dressed with French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lima or Kidney Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Combine the cold boiled beans, shredded green pepper, diced celery, chopped onion, and broken nut meats in a bowl.

  2. Season with salt to taste.

  3. Pour French dressing or any cooked salad dressing over the mixture.

  4. Let the salad stand for 30 minutes in a cold place.

Serve

  1. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

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. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Kidney beans
Provide the bulk and firm, starchy body of the salad.
Nut meats
Add crunch and a rich, toasty flavor that contrasts with the soft beans.
French dressing
Adds moisture and acidity, and coats the vegetables and beans with flavor.
Celery
Contributes crisp texture and a fresh, clean crunch.

The step that matters

Let the salad stand for 30 minutes in a cold place. Standing lets the dressing soak into the beans and vegetables, so flavors blend evenly. Keeping it cold slows spoilage while it rests, so the salad should not be left at room temperature.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pepper, celery, meat, lettuce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, celery, meat, lettuce. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes