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Succotash

Succotash is a dish of corn and lima beans simmered with stock, milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 and cook

  1. Remove the kernels from the corn using a sharp knife.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the corn, Lima beans, and veal stock (or water).

  3. Simmer until the moisture is absorbed and the corn and beans are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the milk, butter, salt, and pepper, and simmer until well combined.

  2. Serve in a covered dish.

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. 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

Sweet corn
Forms the bulk of the dish and its sweet, tender body as it simmers.
Lima beans
Add starchy body and a firm, buttery texture that holds up to simmering.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, binding the corn and beans into a smooth mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor and smoothing the texture.

The step that matters

Simmering until the moisture is absorbed. Cooking the corn and beans until the liquid is absorbed concentrates their flavor and lets starches soften fully. Stopping early leaves the dish watery and the beans less tender.

Swap the lima beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, veal, milk, 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.

More succotash recipes

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