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Succotash

Succotash is a stew of lima beans and corn cooked with milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Cook the beans

  1. Combine the lima beans, boiling water, and 1 teaspoon of salt in a stew-pan and boil gently for 1 hour.

Cook the corn

  1. Add the corn to a separate stew-pan with hot milk, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon butter; cook for 5 minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Drain the beans and season with 1 teaspoon salt, a little pepper, and 1 tablespoon butter.

  2. Stir the beans into the corn and milk mixture and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

  3. Serve very 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  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 starchy body and a firm, substantial texture that holds up in the dish.
Green corn
Adds natural sweetness and tender kernels that contrast with the beans.
Hot milk
Supplies moisture and a creamy liquid that coats the beans and corn.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the beans gently. Gentle heat softens the bean starches evenly while the skins stay intact. A hard boil can break the beans apart and leave some unevenly cooked.

Swap the lima beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, pepper, butter. 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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