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Lima Beans

A simple boiled lima bean dish seasoned with salt, sweet cream or milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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. Shell and wash the lima beans.

  2. Put them into boiling water with a little salt.

  3. Boil until tender, then drain the water.

Serve

  1. Serve with a cup of sweet cream or milk and a lump of butter the size of an egg.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then let them simmer for a few moments.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lima beans + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
The main vegetable, giving the dish its bulk and soft, starchy texture when cooked.
Sweet cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the flavour of the beans.
Butter
Adds fat, giving richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the cooked beans.

The step that matters

Boil until tender. As lima beans cook, their starch softens. Stopping too early leaves them tough and chalky, while overcooking makes them mushy and break down.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Filbertfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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