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Lima Beans

A simple dish of Lima beans cooked with cream, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the Lima beans and soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the beans and cook them in boiling water until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour off the water, then add a little cream and butter.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, and let them simmer for a few minutes before serving.

  3. Optionally, boil a few tomatoes with the beans for a change.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Lima beans + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 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 main body of the dish and provide starchy, tender texture when cooked.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky moisture to the cooked beans.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and a glossy, rounded mouthfeel.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lima beans, cream, butter, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lima beans, cream, 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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