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Succotash

Succotash is a bean and corn dish simmered with butter and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lima beans and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Put the Lima beans in a pot with cold water, covering them.

  2. Add the cobs from the sweet corn and boil for 30 to 45 minutes.

Add the corn

  1. Remove the cobs and add the scraped corn to the pot.

  2. Boil for an additional 15 minutes.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, butter, and cream. Serve 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 + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

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

  3. Lima beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
Provide the starchy, creamy body that forms the base of the dish.
Sweet corn
Adds sweetness and tender texture, with flavour infused from the cobs during boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished dish.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the flavour and giving a silkier texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the corn cobs with the beans. Simmering the cobs releases sweet, starchy flavour into the cooking water, which the beans absorb. Boiling too briefly leaves the dish thin and bland, and boiling too long can make the beans and corn mushy.

“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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