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Winter Succotash

A stew of corn, beans, and pork simmered with cream or milk, butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Winter Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the Shaker corn and Lima or butter beans overnight in lukewarm water.

  2. Drain the beans and corn the next morning.

Cook

  1. Combine the beans, corn, and pork in a kettle with just enough water to cook.

  2. Cook for about 1 hour until tender.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  4. Stir in the cream or milk and butter if using milk before serving.

  5. Boil briefly and 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Shaker corn
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during long simmering.
Lima or butter beans
Add starchy body and a creamy texture as they cook through.
Pork
Adds savory fat and flavor that seasons the broth as it cooks.
Rich cream or sweet milk
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the finished dish.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor when stirred in with the milk.

The step that matters

Cook for about 1 hour until tender. Shaker corn and dried beans need long, gentle simmering to soften fully. Stopping early leaves them tough and starchy, while a hard boil can break the beans apart.

“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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