Skip to main content
Main

Lima Bean Soup

A soup made from Lima beans, potatoes, wheatose, bread, wafers, cherries, apples, vegetable oysters, cream, flour, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Lima Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the Lima beans overnight, then cook them in water until tender.

  2. Peel and boil the potatoes until soft.

  3. Prepare the wheatose according to package instructions.

  4. Bake the whole-wheat bread until golden.

  5. Toast the whole-wheat wafers until crisp.

  6. Drain the canned cherries and set aside.

  7. Slice the apples and mix with citron.

  8. Cook the vegetable oysters in boiling water until tender.

Make and serve the soup

  1. For the soup, blend cooked Lima beans with cream and season to taste.

  2. Serve the soup hot with a dollop of cream on top.

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. Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Lima beans + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lima beans + potatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together62 recipes

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

  5. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 thickness of the soup when blended.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the blended soup.
Potatoes
Soften when boiled, adding starch and body to the dish.
Apples
Add sweetness and acidity, balancing the richer ingredients.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lima beans, potato, wheat, bread, oyster, cream, flour):

  1. Pumpkinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lima beans, potato, wheat, bread, oyster, cream, flour. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes