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Lima Beans

A smooth puree of boiled lima beans served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the lima beans in salted water until tender.

  2. Press the beans through a colander to make a pulp.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the pulp to a saucepan and add a good amount of butter.

  2. Beat the mixture with a spoon until smooth.

  3. Season with sugar and adjust thickness with milk if necessary.

  4. Serve with fried bread around the dish.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Lima beans + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lima beans + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 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
Provide the main body and starchy base that the purée is built from.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the mashed beans.
Milk
Loosens the purée to adjust its thickness and softens the texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the earthy flavour of the beans.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Cocoafits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, bread. 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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