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Green Lima Beans

A dish of boiled green lima beans flavored with butter, flour, and optional fine herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Green Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Cover the shelled beans with boiling water and boil quickly.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer until tender, about 45 to 60 minutes.

  3. Pour off some water.

  4. Season with salt and butter.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in flour until smooth and frothy.

  3. Add the beans.

  4. Stir for 5 minutes over heat.

  5. Add water, stock, or milk.

  6. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  7. Add fine herbs a few minutes 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Lima beans + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

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

  4. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lima beans + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Green lima beans
Provide the main body of the dish and tender texture when simmered.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the beans and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, lightly bound sauce when cooked with butter.
Water, meat stock, or milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, giving moisture and body once simmered.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the butter until smooth and frothy. Cooking flour in melted butter first, as a roux, removes raw starch taste and lets it thicken evenly. Adding liquid before the flour is well blended can leave lumps.

Swap the lima beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, meat. 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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