Name: Lima Beans
Ingredients: dried Lima beans; fat; coarse sea salt; black pepper

Why it works: Lima beans and pepper work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 468 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Ingredients

dried Lima beans
fat
coarse sea salt
black pepper

Directions

Weigh and measure the dried Lima beans, then wash and soak them for 24 hours.
If possible, soak for an additional 12 to 24 hours and weigh again to see how much they swell.
Cook the soaked beans until the skins are tender.
Slip off the skins by hand after parboiling.
Cook the skinned beans and serve like mashed potatoes with fat, salt, and pepper.
Alternatively, rinse some beans that retain their shape and serve with lettuce and dressing for a salad.

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.

Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together468 recipes

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

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