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Dried Lima Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from dried lima beans, salt pork, water, soup stock, milk, and served with toasted bits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the soaked Lima beans and place them in a large pot with the salt pork.

Make the soup

  1. Add 1 gallon of water and boil until the beans are very tender.

  2. Rub the cooked beans through a sieve and return to the pot.

  3. Stir in 1 quart of soup stock and enough milk to achieve the desired consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve with small bits of toast fried in butter and lard or browned in the oven.

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. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Lima beans + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together139 recipes

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

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  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 starch that thicken the soup when puréed.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the broth.
Soup stock
Adds savory depth and liquid to the soup base.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the texture to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Rub the cooked beans through a sieve. Beans must be fully tender before sieving, since firm beans will not pass through smoothly and leave a grainy texture. Pushing them through breaks down the cell walls, which gives the soup its smooth body.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Peanutfits about as well
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Soybeanfits about as well
  4. Lima beansthe original

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