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Stewed Lima Beans

A simple stew of lima beans cooked with onion, butter, stock, and seasoned with parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Stewed Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the shelled beans with the onion slices until tender.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. For dried beans, soak 1 pint overnight.

  4. Drain the soaked beans and cover with fresh warm water.

  5. Drain again.

  6. Cover with boiling soft water and boil for 30 minutes.

  7. After boiling for an hour, add salt.

  8. Drain the beans.

Stew the beans

  1. In a pot, heat the dripping or butter until hot.

  2. Add the minced onion and fry until fragrant.

  3. Stir in the beans and add enough hot stock or water to half cover them.

  4. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Just before serving, stir in the minced parsley without boiling.

  6. Dredge with flour.

  7. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

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

  3. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  4. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
Form the body of the dish, becoming soft and tender as they cook.
Dripping or butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying the flavour of the fried onion through the stew.
Onion
Adds aroma and savoury sweetness when fried, flavouring the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the stew becomes slightly creamy.

The step that matters

Stirring in the parsley without boiling. Fresh herbs lose their bright colour and fresh aroma when heated for long, so the parsley should be added just before serving and kept off a boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lima beans, egg, beans, parsley, pepper, flour):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lima beans, egg, beans, parsley, pepper, 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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