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Succotash

Succotash is a hot dish of corn, lima beans, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

  1. Cut the grains off the cobs of the corn.

  2. Mix the corn with the lima beans.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture in salted water until well cooked.

  2. Drain the mixture through a colander and keep it hot in a pan.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the eggs and mix with the butter.

  2. Pour the egg and butter mixture over the corn and beans, adding salt and pepper to taste.

  3. 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. Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  5. Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 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
Provides the sweet, tender body of the dish.
Lima beans
Add starchy bulk and a firm, creamy texture when cooked.
Eggs
Bind with the butter to coat the vegetables and add richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, savory coating.

The step that matters

Boil until well cooked. Corn and lima beans need enough cooking to soften their starches fully. Undercooked beans stay tough and chalky, while the hot pour-over step cannot fix that.

Swap the lima beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, egg, butter, 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.

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