Skip to main content
Side

Spring Succotash

A tomato, lima bean, corn, and bacon side dish cooked with onion, garlic, sugar, pepper, butter, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 vegetable mixture

  1. Place canned tomatoes, minced onion, garlic, sugar, and pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

  3. Add canned lima beans and corn.

  4. Simmer for 10 minutes longer.

  5. Stir in butter or margarine.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

  2. Cover with grated cheese.

  3. Brown in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  4. Arrange long, crisp strips of cooked bacon on top as a garnish.

  5. Serve.

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 lima beans
Provide the main body and starchy texture of the dish.
Canned corn
Adds sweetness and bulk to the vegetable mixture.
Canned tomatoes
Supply liquid and acidity that gently cook the vegetables together.
Grated cheese
Melts over the top and browns in the oven for a golden crust.
Butter or margarine
Adds fat and richness that carries flavor through the mixture.

The step that matters

Brown in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C). The cheese needs enough high heat to melt and brown on top; too low a temperature leaves it pale and greasy while the mixture underneath stays underheated.

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.

More succotash recipes

Curried 3 See all 78 →

You might also like

Onion PuddingOnion Pudding9 recipesEggplant CakesEggplant Cakes34 recipesEscalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)Escalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)25 recipesParsnip CroquettesParsnip Croquettes12 recipes