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Winter Succotash

A winter stew of corn, lima beans, and cream thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Winter Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the dried lima beans and corn.

  2. Place the beans in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  3. Cover the corn with cold water and set it on top of the kettle with the beans.

Cook

  1. Cook the beans for 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain the beans and cover them with boiling water.

  3. Add the corn to the beans.

  4. Cook the mixture for 15 minutes or until done.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the cream thickened with flour.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

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

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried corn
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens into tender kernels during cooking.
Dried lima beans
Provide the main body and creamy texture once cooked until tender.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished dish.
Flour
Thickens the cream so it coats the beans and corn rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream thickened with flour. Flour must be mixed smoothly into the cream before adding it, since dry flour stirred straight into hot liquid forms lumps. The starch then thickens the cream as it heats, so it clings to the vegetables.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, flour, cream, 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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