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To Make Succotash

Succotash is a dish of boiled beans and corn thickened with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

To Make Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil shelled beans in water with cobs for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the cobs and add corn.

  3. Use minimal water and thicken with a little cream when nearly boiled.

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. Beans + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Shelled beans
Provide the main body and starchy texture of the dish as they cook.
Corn
Adds sweetness and a tender bite that contrasts with the beans.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, thickening the cooking liquid into a smoother coating.

The step that matters

Use minimal water when cooking the beans and corn. Too much water dilutes the flavour and leaves the dish thin. Keeping the liquid low lets the starch from the beans and corn thicken it, so the cream finishes the texture rather than watering it down.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, 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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