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Succotash
10 ears corn 1 pint lima beans 2 tablespoons shortening 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon pepper 1 cup sweet cream With a sharp knife cut corn from cobs, and add to lima beans the last fifteen minutes of cooking. The mixture should be cooked nearly dry. Add shortening, seasonings and cream, and simmer for ten minutes. Serves 8.
A plain summer succotash that assumes you have already got the beans on the stove — the recipe begins mid-process, so plan the bean cooking first and add the corn at the end.
- The beans come firstThe instruction "add to lima beans the last fifteen minutes of cooking" means the beans are already simmering (the salt here goes in at the end, with the cream). Fresh shelled limas need about 20-25 minutes; dried limas need soaking and closer to an hour, so start them well ahead.
- A pint of limasMeasured shelled, not in the pod — a pint is roughly 12 oz, or about 2 lb of limas in the shell. Frozen baby limas substitute directly and need only 10 minutes before the corn goes in.
- Corn quantityTen ears gives 4-5 cups of kernels, which is a generous ratio to the beans. Scrape the cobs with the back of the knife after cutting to get the milky pulp; it does much of the thickening here.
- "Cooked nearly dry"This is the hinge. Let the cooking water reduce almost completely before the cream goes in, or the finished dish is soup. Keep the pan uncovered for the last few minutes if it is still loose.
- Shortening"Shortening" in American cookbooks was a general term for fat and could mean butter, lard or a solid vegetable fat. Butter suits the dish well; use 2 tablespoons either way.
- PepperA full teaspoon of pepper against a teaspoon of salt is aggressive by current taste. Start with a quarter teaspoon and adjust at the end.
- Sweet cream"Sweet" only distinguishes it from soured or cultured cream — any pouring cream works. Keep the simmer very gentle for the final ten minutes so it thickens rather than breaks.
- YieldEight as a side dish, and it reheats reasonably, though the corn firms up. Loosen with a little milk rather than adding more cream.
Succotash is one of the few dishes in American cookery that kept its Indigenous name: it descends from a Narragansett word usually given as msickquatash, referring to boiled corn kernels. The corn-and-bean pairing was long established in Native agriculture and cooking before English settlers adopted it, and the combination is nutritionally sound as well as seasonal — the two crops ripen together and were often planted together. By the time this menu book appeared, succotash had settled into the role it plays here: an unfussy vegetable side for the height of summer, when green corn and fresh shell beans overlap for a few short weeks. The cup of cream and the finishing simmer are the American home-kitchen refinement, turning a boiled-vegetable dish into something closer to a creamed one.