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Creamed Lima Beans

Creamed lima beans made with milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Creamed Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Place the lima beans in a double boiler or a tin pail set in a kettle of water.

  2. Cover the beans with milk and tightly close the vessel.

  3. Boil the water in the lower vessel for one hour.

Serve

  1. Season with salt, butter, and pepper 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

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

  4. Lima beans + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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, tender texture of the dish.
Milk
Cooks gently around the beans, creating a creamy, rich sauce as it thickens.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling gently in the lower vessel for the full hour. Gentle, steady heat cooks the beans through slowly while the milk stays below a hard boil. Letting the milk scorch or boil over can cause it to catch on the vessel and turn the sauce grainy. Keeping the vessel tightly closed traps steam and holds the milk at a steady temperature.

Swap the lima beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, 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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