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Boiled Lima Beans
Shell the beans and throw them into cold water to remain there until they are wanted. An hour before they are required place them in boiling water, adding some salt, and boil them until tender, when drain off the water, add a little fresh butter, and serve.
A plain vegetable side from the Waldorf's kitchen, written when limas came in the pod and cooks worked by feel rather than the clock. The one thing to change is the timing.
- An hour is far too longTiming — The hour is a window, not a cooking time: the recipe says to boil until tender. Fresh shelled limas are usually tender in 15 to 25 minutes at a gentle boil; frozen ones in 8 to 12.
- The cold-water holdingShelled beans held in cold water are kept from drying out and discolouring at the cut edge, though the recipe does not say why. It still works for an hour or two on the counter, or overnight refrigerated, but do not confuse it with soaking dried beans.
- Fresh versus driedThis recipe assumes fresh limas in the pod, sold in late summer. Dried limas are a different proposition entirely, needing soaking and 45 to 90 minutes of simmering. Frozen baby limas are the closest year-round stand-in and want the shortest cooking of all.
- Never taste them rawRaw lima beans contain cyanogenic compounds, and are bitter and unpleasant besides. The recipe does not say whether the pot is covered; boiling uncovered lets volatile breakdown products escape. Judge doneness by biting a cooled cooked bean, not a raw one.
- Salt the water generouslySalt the water — about a tablespoon per quart, which is what the recipe's "adding some salt" amounts to. Salting the cooking water is generally held to season the beans better than salt added after draining.
- "A little fresh butter"Roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons per pound of shelled beans, added to the hot drained beans off the heat and swirled until it coats them. Unsalted butter, and a pinch more salt and white pepper to finish.
- YieldTwo pounds of limas in the pod give roughly three-quarters of a pound to a pound shelled, enough for about four as a side dish.
Lima beans reached American tables from South America — the name comes from the Peruvian capital, and the seed was moving north through the Caribbean and into North American gardens long before Oscar Tschirky was arranging Waldorf menus. By 1896, when this book appeared, the large flat "potato" lima and the smaller, sweeter sieva or butter bean were both standard summer market vegetables in the Northeast, sold in the pod and shelled at home or by kitchen staff. The entry is a brief one, and one might read something into that: a hotel cookbook of this period recorded the plain accompaniments alongside the elaborate garnished dishes, because a cook needed to know exactly how the house treated a bowl of beans as much as how it dressed a terrapin.