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Lima Beans

A simple dish of lima beans simmered with butter and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the lima beans and cover them with cold water.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes, then pour off the water.

  3. Add enough hot water to cover the beans and a little coarse sea salt.

  4. Boil until the beans are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, add the butter and enough cream to make a gravy.

  2. Let it come to a boil before serving.

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

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

  2. Lima beans + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Walnut + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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 once cooked until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the gravy.
Cream
Thickens the cooking liquid into a creamy gravy and adds richness.

The step that matters

Let it come to a boil before serving. Once the cream is added, bringing the mixture to a boil helps it heat through fully and thicken into a gravy. Cream can separate or look thin if it is not heated enough.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, walnut, 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.

More lima beans recipes

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

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