For wholly unknown reasons, April 20 is National Lima Bean Respect Day.

And lima beans could probably use a bit more in the way of respect. After all, along with beets and Brussels sprouts, they routinely pop up on most-disliked-food lists, to the point where people who think they’re yummy often get defensive about it. Lima beans are “pillowy, velvety, and delicious,” writes Laurie Colwin in More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen, “and people should stop saying mean things about them.”

Thomas Jefferson loved them, and frequently ate them in okra soup, an early version of gumbo, made with cymlings (pattypan squash), lima beans, and tomatoes.

Frances Trollope, author of the caustic 19th-century bestseller The Domestic