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Cream of Lima Bean Soup

A creamy soup made with lima beans, milk, stock, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Cream of Lima Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Place fresh beans in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, and boil gently for about 30 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain the beans and press them through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the milk and stock in a double boiler.

  2. Rub together the butter and flour in a separate bowl.

  3. Add the butter-flour mixture to the boiling milk and stock, stirring until it thickens.

  4. Add the pressed beans to the mixture.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Cover and let stand until hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 flavor of the soup when pressed into a purée.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Stock
Adds savory depth to the liquid base.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and combines with flour to form a roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks into the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour mixture to the hot liquid. If the flour and butter are not well rubbed together, or the mixture is added without stirring, lumps form and the soup thickens unevenly. Stirring while adding disperses the starch so it gelatinizes smoothly as the liquid heats.

Swap the lima beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, veal, 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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