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Lima and Butter Beans

A simple dish of boiled lima beans seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter or cream dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 and Butter Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the lima beans into cold water and let them stand for a while.

Cook and serve

  1. Put the beans into a pot with plenty of boiling water and a little salt.

  2. Cook the beans fast until tender, about 40 minutes to 1 hour for large beans.

  3. Drain the beans and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Pour melted butter or cream dressing over the beans before serving.

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 + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
Starch that softens during cooking to give the beans their tender, creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the beans and carrying flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the beans fast until tender. Beans need enough time in boiling water for their starch to soften fully. Large beans can stay firm or mealy if they are pulled too early, so test for tenderness rather than relying only on the clock.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Walnutfits about as well
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter. 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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