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Succotash

Succotash is a corn and bean dish cooked with butter, salt, pepper, and optional salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and beans 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 ↓

Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the kernels from the corn cobs.

  2. Soak the cobs and shelled beans in water for 1.5 hours.

Cook

  1. Boil the cobs for 1 hour, then remove them.

  2. Add the corn kernels to the boiling water and cook for 30 minutes.

Season and serve

  1. Add salt, butter, and pepper to taste before serving.

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 + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 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. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  5. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it natural sweetness when cooked.
Shelled beans
Soaking and simmering soften their starchy flesh, making them tender and filling.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives a smooth, rich mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Add the corn kernels to the boiling water and cook for 30 minutes.. Corn kernels need enough heat for their starches to soften, but prolonged boiling makes them tough and dulls their sweet flavor. Timing this stage keeps the kernels tender.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, butter, pepper, pork. 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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