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Lima Beans in Tomato Sauce

A tomato-based stew of lima beans cooked with butter or bacon, onion, water, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lima Beans in Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter or cook the bacon until crisp.

  2. Add the water and onion, cooking until the onion is very tender.

  3. Stir in the tomato juice and lima beans.

  4. Heat through and season with salt and pepper.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + lima beanstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + lima beanstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
Form the body of the dish and provide a soft, starchy texture.
Tomato juice
Adds acidity and tomato flavor, giving the sauce its color and tang.
Butter or bacon
Provides fat for cooking and carries savory flavor into the sauce.
Onion
Adds aroma, and becomes sweeter and milder as it softens slowly.

The step that matters

Cook the onion until very tender. Onion softened gently in water becomes mild and sweet. If it is removed early, its raw sharpness stays in the sauce and the flavor tastes harsh.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, tomato, 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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