Lima bean

The lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus), known across much of the English-speaking world as the butter bean, is the broad, flat, kidney-shaped seed of a climbing or bushy New World legume domesticated in the Andes and Mesoamerica thousands of years ago. The seeds run from a soft pale green through cream to white, and some heirlooms are speckled or maroon; cooked, they turn meltingly soft and starchy with a mild, faintly sweet, distinctly buttery taste that gives the butter bean its name. Small green limas are the partner of sweetcorn in the Native-American dish succotash and a fixture of Southern cooking, while the large flat white type is the gigante bean stewed in olive oil and tomato across Greece and the eastern Mediterranean.