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 the pork
If the pork is very salty, soak it for 1 hour before cooking.
Boil the pork until it is half cooked.
Cook and serve
Add the corn and lima beans to the pot and cook until tender.
Serve the meat on a dish and the vegetables in a tureen.
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.
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Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together222 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Corn + porktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,069 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Lima beans + porktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together139 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
- Green corn
- Provides the sweet kernels and most of the dish's fresh vegetable body.
- Lima beans
- Add starchy, creamy texture that holds the succotash together as it cooks.
- Pickled pork
- Adds salty, savory flavor and fat that seasons the corn and beans as they simmer.
The step that matters
Soaking the salty pork. Pickled pork is cured in salt, so if it is very salty, soaking it first draws out excess salt. Without soaking, the broth in which the corn and beans cook can become too salty to eat.
Swap the lima beans
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, pork):
- Beansfits better
- Peanutfits about as well
- Lima beansthe original
- Soybeanfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against corn, 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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