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Succotash

A stew of sweet corn, lima beans, and salt pork, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the corn from the cobs, dividing the kernels in half.

  2. Scrape the cobs and place them in a large pot of water.

Cook

  1. Boil the cobs for 2 hours, then remove and scrape them thoroughly back into the pot.

  2. Add the Lima beans to the pot and the salt pork.

  3. Boil for 45 minutes, then add the corn, sugar, and salt.

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 + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

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

  3. Lima beans + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together139 recipes

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

  4. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Lima beans + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet corn
Provides the main sweet flavor and tender texture of the dish.
Lima beans
Add starch and a firm, creamy texture that holds up to long boiling.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the broth and the vegetables.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salt pork and the savory broth.

The step that matters

Boiling the cobs for 2 hours. Long simmering extracts the milky starch and sweet flavor from the cobs into the water, which becomes the base of the dish. Stopping early yields a thin, weakly flavored broth.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, pork, sugar. 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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