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Lima Beans, Plain Boiled

A simple boiled lima bean dish seasoned with salt, butter, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lima beans and butter work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lima Beans, Plain Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the lima beans from the pods.

  2. Soak the beans in cold water for a few minutes to make them crisp.

Cook

  1. Boil the beans in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. Toss the beans in a sauté pan over high heat with butter.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot platter as a vegetable or use as a garnish.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 starchy body and tender texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy coating that carries flavour across the beans.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until tender. Lima beans turn from firm to mealy or tough if under- or over-cooked, so testing for tenderness rather than relying on a set time gives the best texture.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Walnutfits about as well
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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