Name: Lima Bean Salad
Ingredients: Lima beans; 1 onion; Olive oil; Lemon juice; Coarse sea salt; Cayenne pepper; Chopped chives; Hard boiled eggs

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lima Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the lima beans, then drain and press dry in a napkin.
Place the beans in a salad bowl and chill in the refrigerator until very cold.
Dice the onion, blanch it, then immerse in cold water and press dry.
Season the onion with olive oil, lemon juice, coarse sea salt, and cayenne pepper.
Heap the seasoned onion in a pyramid on a salad plate.
Sprinkle with chopped chives and garnish with hard boiled eggs cut into quarters around the base.
Serve immediately.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,907 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Olive + chivetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,633 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,922 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, olive, lemon, pepper, chive, egg):

Chickpeafits better
Sesamefits better
Black-eyed peafits better
Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, olive, lemon, pepper, chive, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.