Skip to main content
Main

Mushrooms with Lima Beans

A simple stew of lima beans and mushrooms cooked with butter, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushrooms with Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans and mushrooms

  1. In a pot, combine the cooked lima beans and fresh mushrooms.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Season and finish

  1. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Stir in the butter and cream.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Lima beans + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lima beans + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 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 body and starchy, creamy texture of the stew.
Fresh mushrooms
Release moisture and savory flavor as they simmer with the beans.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture that softens the stew's flavor.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, butter, cream. 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

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes