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Succotash

Succotash is a corn and bean dish cooked with milk or cream and butter, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans and corn

  1. Boil the beans in just enough water for 1 hour before adding the corn.

  2. Combine 2 parts corn to 1 part beans.

  3. Cook slowly on the back of the stove to prevent burning.

Finish

  1. When nearly done, stir in milk or cream to achieve desired consistency.

  2. If not using cream, add butter and season with salt.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Provides the main sweetness and bulk of the dish.
Lima or butter beans
Adds starchy, creamy texture and substance to the dish.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and moisture, and sets the final consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel when cream is not used.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly on the back of the stove. Corn sugars and bean starches scorch easily on direct heat, and the bottom of the pot can burn before the rest is cooked. Low, gentle heat keeps the mixture from sticking and burning.

“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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