Skip to main content
Main

Succotash

A dish of lima beans and corn cooked with butter, cream, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lima beans and corn 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 cob and shell the beans.

  2. Put them into separate pots of slightly salted boiling water and cook until tender.

  3. Drain well and mix them together.

Finish and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the mixture with butter and cream.

  2. Add sugar and pepper, then shake gently over heat until thoroughly 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. Lima beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Lima beans + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
Provide the main body and starchy, creamy texture of the dish.
Green corn
Adds sweetness and tender texture that contrasts with the beans.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping bind the vegetables together.
Sugar
Enhances the natural sweetness of the corn.

The step that matters

Shake gently over heat until thoroughly hot. Vigorous stirring or high heat can break down the tender corn and beans and make the cream separate or scorch on the pan bottom. Gentle heat warms everything evenly while keeping the texture intact.

Swap the lima beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, butter, cream, sugar, 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.

More succotash recipes

Curried 3 See all 78 →

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipes