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Dried Lima Beans

A dish of cooked lima beans prepared with water, milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dried Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Soak

  1. Wash the beans and soak them overnight in 3 pints of cold water.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and cover them with fresh cold water.

  3. If needed for a late dinner, change the water again at noon.

Cook

  1. Two and a half hours before dinner, drain the beans and put them into a saucepan with 1 quart of boiling water.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes, then drain the beans again.

  3. Return the beans to the saucepan and cover with 1 quart of fresh boiling water.

  4. Boil until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain off all the water, then add 4 tablespoons of milk, ½ tablespoon of butter, and salt and pepper to taste.

  2. As soon as the milk boils, serve the beans in a hot vegetable dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  4. Lima beans + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. 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

Dried lima beans
Form the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, starchy texture when soaked and boiled.
Milk
Adds moisture and a creamy richness to the drained beans.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rounded flavor and glossy finish.

The step that matters

Boil until tender. Dried lima beans need enough sustained heat to soften their starch fully; stopping early leaves them firm and chalky in the center. Keep the water at a steady boil and test a bean before draining.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Cocoafits about as well
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Lima beansthe original
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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.

More lima beans recipes

Creamed 13Boiled 8Canned 8Dried 6Stewed 6Baked 3 See all 92 →

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