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String Bean Succotash

A vegetable dish of string beans and corn simmered with butter, pepper, salt, flour, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,211 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

String Bean Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the string beans in enough water to cover for 2 hours, ensuring it doesn't boil dry.

  2. Add the corn and boil for an additional 20 minutes.

  3. Season with butter, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir in the moistened flour and sweet milk.

  5. Let it boil for 10 minutes.

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. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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

What each ingredient does

String beans
Form the bulk of the dish and, after long boiling, give it a soft, tender body.
Corn
Adds sweetness and substance as the kernels cook through with the beans.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor of the vegetables.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the succotash turns creamy rather than watery.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, softening the texture of the thickened broth.

The step that matters

Stir in the moistened flour and sweet milk. Flour must be fully moistened first so it disperses without lumps. Once stirred into hot liquid, starch thickens the mixture, and the boil then cooks out the raw flour taste.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, butter, pepper, flour, milk):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Walnutfits less well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, butter, pepper, flour, milk. 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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