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Mother's Succotash

A stew of corn, lima beans, salt pork, and seasonings simmered until thick or thin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lima beans work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 222 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Mother's Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the corn cobs in 3 quarts of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the cobs and add the cut corn and lima beans to the water.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add salt, pepper, and sugar.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour or until the mixture reaches your desired consistency.

  3. Serve thin like a soup or thick as a vegetable, adding cream just before serving if desired.

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. Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

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

  2. Corn + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lima beans + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together139 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

Corn
Provides sweetness and body as its starch thickens the cooking liquid.
Green lima beans
Add starchy texture and substance that make the dish hearty.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the simmering liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the finished dish when used.

The step that matters

Simmering for the full hour. Long, gentle simmering lets the lima beans soften fully and the starch from the corn thicken the liquid. Stopping early leaves beans firm and the mixture thin, while boiling hard can break the beans apart and make the texture uneven.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, pork, pepper, sugar, cream):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, pork, pepper, sugar, cream. 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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