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Lima Beans, French Style

Creamy lima beans cooked with butter, cream, egg yolks, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lima Beans, French Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the lima beans until tender.

  2. In a bowl, mix the cream with the egg yolks.

  3. Melt the butter in a pan over low heat.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the cream and egg mixture to the pan, stirring well.

  2. Toss the cooked beans in the mixture over low heat until combined.

Serve

  1. Serve topped with chopped parsley.

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

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

  2. Lima beans + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
Provide the starchy, tender base that the sauce coats.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the sauce a smooth, silky body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream gently when heated, binding the sauce to the beans.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour, helping the sauce feel smooth on the palate.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg mixture to the butter. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot, so keeping the heat low and stirring constantly lets the yolks thicken the cream into a smooth sauce rather than curdling it.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, butter, parsley):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, butter, parsley. 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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