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Lima Beans

A simple dish of lima beans topped with a butter and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the lima beans overnight.

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

  3. Boil the beans slowly until very tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the hot milk, stirring until thick and smooth.

  4. Season the sauce with salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cooked beans and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 texture of the dish once cooked until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries the flour for a smooth base.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the melted butter and hot milk into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as it heats with the flour.

The step that matters

Stir the flour and hot milk smoothly. Flour clumps if it meets liquid unevenly. Adding the hot milk gradually while stirring lets the starch disperse and gelatinize evenly, giving a smooth, thick sauce instead of lumps.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk. 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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