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Spring Succotash

A savory stew of tomatoes, lima beans, corn, onion, and garlic, finished with butter and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Spring Succotash

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the succotash

  1. In a saucepan, combine the canned tomatoes, minced onion, garlic, sugar, and pepper. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

  2. Add the canned lima beans and corn. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the butter or margarine and serve.

Optional variation and garnish

  1. For a variation, pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish, top with grated cheese, and brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  2. Arrange strips of cooked bacon on top as a garnish.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Lima beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes
Provide the liquid and acidity that form the base of the dish.
Canned lima beans
Add starchy body and a firm, hearty texture to the mixture.
Canned corn
Adds sweetness and tender texture to the vegetable mixture.
Minced onion
Builds savory depth as it softens during the initial cooking.
Grated cheese
Melts and browns on top in the optional baked variation, adding fat and flavor.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, corn, clove, garlic, sugar, pepper):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, corn, clove, garlic, sugar, 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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