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Succotash
1 pint of young lima or kidney 1/2 pint of milk or cream, 1 tablespoonful of butter, beans, 1 pint of corn pressed from the Salt and pepper to taste. cob, Shell the beans, cover them with boiling water, add a teaspoonful of salt and boil twenty-five minutes; then add an eighth-teaspoonful of baking soda, boil one minute, then drain. Score the corn and press it from the cob, add it to the beans, then add the milk, butter, salt and pepper, stir continually over the fire for five minutes, and it is ready to serve.
In winter, when the corn and beans are dried, soak both separately over night. In the morning, cover the beans with fresh water and boil gently for two hours. Do not drain the water from the corn, but keep it on the back part of the fire where it will not boil during the two hours the beans are boiling. When the beans are tender, drain them, add them to the corn, which should have just water enough to cover. Cook slowly for twenty minutes, then add the cream, butter, salt and pepper.
This may also be made from canned corn and beans.
The ingredient list here was set in two columns and has come through scrambled; read it as 1 pint young lima or kidney beans, 1 pint corn pressed from the cob, 1/2 pint milk or cream, 1 tablespoon butter, salt and pepper.
- The measurements untangledA pint of shelled beans is roughly 10 oz, and a pint of kernels is about 3 to 4 ears of corn. Half a pint of milk or cream is one cup.
- Skip the baking sodaThe eighth-teaspoon of soda was used to keep beans green and hasten softening. It thins cell walls and pushes the beans toward mush while flattening flavour; it also destroys thiamine. Fresh young limas need nothing but salted water.
- Twenty-five minutes is for old beansModern fresh or frozen baby limas are tender in 8 to 12 minutes. Taste at eight. Boiling a full 25 minutes leaves them starchy and broken.
- Scoring the cornTo score is to run a knife tip down the centre of each row of kernels, then press the pulp out with the back of the blade, leaving the tough hulls on the cob. It gives a creamier succotash than cutting kernels off whole, and it is the step that makes this version worth doing.
- The five minutes at the endFresh corn pressed from the cob needs very little cooking; the five minutes of constant stirring is largely to thicken the corn starch into the milk. Keep it below a hard boil so the milk does not break.
- Dried beans and cornThe winter method most likely means dried sweet corn rather than popcorn or hominy, though the recipe says only 'dried.' Two hours of gentle simmering suits older dried limas; check at 60 to 75 minutes with beans bought this year.
- With canned or frozenDrain canned beans, combine with drained corn, and give the whole thing five to eight minutes with the milk and butter. Frozen corn and limas need only to be heated through.
- YieldServes four to six as a side dish.
Succotash comes from the Narragansett msickquatash, meaning boiled whole kernels of corn, and the dish is one of the clearest survivals of Indigenous foodways in the Anglo-American kitchen: corn and beans grown together in the same hill, then cooked together in the same pot. New England cookbooks carried it through the nineteenth century as a summer dish and, in dried form, as a winter one, which is why this entry gives two methods. The addition of milk, cream and butter is the later domestic refinement; earlier versions were often built on the liquor from boiled salt pork. Household manuals of this period recommended a pinch of baking soda to keep green vegetables bright, though the practice was already being criticised and continued to be argued over long afterwards.