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Cream of Lima Bean Soup

A creamy soup made from soaked lima beans, onions, carrots, butter, flour, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cream of Lima Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. Add cold water.

  4. Cook the beans until soft, adding more water as needed.

  5. Rub the cooked beans through a sieve.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the vegetables into small cubes.

  2. Cook the vegetables in half the butter for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove the vegetables.

Finish the soup

  1. Add flour, salt, and pepper to the soup.

  2. Stir in the cream.

  3. Reheat the soup.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Add the remaining butter in small pieces.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lima beans + carrottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dry lima beans
Form the main body of the soup once cooked and pureed through a sieve.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, cooking the vegetables gently and enriching the final soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it body as it is combined with the fat and liquid.

The step that matters

Add flour, salt, and pepper to the soup. Flour needs to be well dispersed and heated in the liquid to thicken smoothly; adding it lumpy or without enough stirring can leave clumps and a pasty texture.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, cream, butter, flour, 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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