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Lima Bean Soup

A creamy soup made from lima beans, milk, and butter, seasoned with onion, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lima Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the bean base

  1. Slice the onion and brown it in the butter.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth and brown.

  3. Add the water, bay leaf, and beans, and cook for 20 minutes or until the beans are soft.

  4. Press the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Scald the milk, add the bean mixture, and cook until thickened.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lima beans + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 soup thickens around.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and browns the flour for a richer, nuttier taste.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter and liquids.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body, and thickens further when scalded and cooked with the bean mixture.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma when browned in butter.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Stirring the flour in butter until it turns brown cooks off its raw taste and develops a nutty flavor. Stopping too early leaves a pasty, floury taste, and going too far can scorch it and make the soup bitter.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, onion, 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.

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