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Lima Beans with Cream

A creamy side dish of Lima beans simmered with milk or cream, butter, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Lima Beans with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the Lima beans as you would for stewed Lima beans until the water is drained.

  2. Add the hot milk or cream, butter, and pepper.

  3. Let simmer for a few minutes.

  4. Serve warm.

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. Butter + lima beanstop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lima beanstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

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

  4. Milk + lima beanstop 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

Lima beans
Form the body of the dish, becoming soft and tender as they cook.
Hot milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, creating the creamy texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Let simmer for a few minutes. Simmering gently lets the milk or cream thicken slightly and absorb flavor from the beans and butter. Boiling hard can scorch the dairy or cause it to separate.

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.

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