Skip to main content
Main

Lima Beans

A simple dish of green or dried lima beans cooked with milk, butter, salt, pepper, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Green beans and lima beans share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. If using dried lima beans, soak them in cold water for 12 hours.

  2. Boil the soaked beans, adding baking soda to the water.

  3. If using green beans, boil them in salted water until tender, about 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain the water and add milk or cream, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Let the beans simmer in the milk for a moment 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. Green beans + lima beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Green beans + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together369 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lima beanstop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lima beanstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green beans or dried lima beans
Form the main body of the dish, providing the starchy, tender base the sauce coats.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming a creamy sauce around the beans.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the milk sauce.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's pH, helping dried lima beans soften more quickly.

The step that matters

Boil the soaked beans with baking soda. Baking soda raises the water's alkalinity, which helps the dried bean skins and starches break down so the beans soften. Too much can make them mushy or soapy-tasting, so measure it carefully.

Swap the green beans

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

  1. Green beansthe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, pepper, lima beans. 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 →

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Pea SoupGreen Pea Soup181 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipes