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Succotash Soup

A soup of corn, shell beans, veal, and milk seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and beans 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 ↓

Succotash Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove the corn from the cobs.

  2. Boil the cobs with the veal for 3 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the shell beans to the pot.

  2. Then, add the corn.

  3. Finally, stir in the boiling milk and season with salt and pepper.

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 + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beans + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,266 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Adds sweetness and body to the soup.
Veal
Gives the broth rich, savory flavor and body as it simmers.
Shell beans
Add substance and a mild, creamy texture to the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the broth's flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in the boiling milk and season with salt and pepper.. Milk can scorch on the bottom of the pot and curdle or separate when it boils hard, so stir it in as the soup finishes and season afterward.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits less well
  4. Peanutfits less well

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