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Succotash

A bean and corn stew cooked with salt pork, sugar, butter, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,211 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Boil the shelled beans in cold water for 1 hour, or 2 hours if not tender, with the salt pork.

  2. Boil the cobs with the beans for 1 hour.

Add the corn

  1. Cut the corn from the sweet corn ears.

  2. Once the beans are cooked, add the corn.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes, ensuring there is barely enough water to cover.

Season and finish

  1. Add salt and sugar to taste, and butter as desired.

  2. If preferred, drain the cooking water.

  3. Stir in the cream or milk, butter, and salt to taste.

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. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 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. Pork + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 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

Shelled beans
Provide the main body of the dish and a tender, starchy texture when fully cooked.
Sweet corn
Adds sweetness and juicy kernels that contrast with the beans.
Salt pork
Releases fat and savory flavor into the cooking water, seasoning the beans.
Sugar
Enhances the natural sweetness of the corn and beans.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy moisture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Keep the water level low when adding the corn. Boiling with barely enough water to cover concentrates the cooking liquid and its flavor, so the dish thickens and tastes richer instead of watery. Too much water dilutes the flavor and makes the dish soupy.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Lima beansfits about as well

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