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Succotash
2 cups green corn or 1 cup dried corn 2 cups fresh Lima, string or butter beans or 1 cup dried Lima beans Salt and pepper 1 cup milk 4 tablespoons butter If fresh vegetables are used, cut the corn from the cob. Cover the beans with the least possible amount of boiling water, to prevent scorching, and cook until tender. Drain off the water, add the corn and the milk and cook slowly until the corn is tender. Add the butter and other seasoning. When dried corn and beans are used, soak both separately overnight. In the morning, cover the beans with fresh water, and boil them very gently until tender. Do not drain the water from the corn, but set the pan containing it on the back of the range where it will cook slowly. When the beans are tender, drain and add them to the corn, allowing only water enough to cover them. Cook slowly until tender and drain off water and save for soup. Add the milk and seasoning.
A plain stovetop succotash that works from either fresh or dried corn and beans. The one thing to watch is the corn: it goes starchy and tough if it boils hard in milk.
- Green corn"Green corn" means fresh sweet corn at the milk stage, not a green-coloured variety. Two cups is roughly the kernels from three to four ears; scrape the cobs with the back of the knife afterward to get the milky liquid, which thickens the dish.
- Butter beans"Butter bean" is generally another name for the Lima, though which type it means varies by region; fresh shell beans or frozen Limas work, and frozen Limas need only 8-10 minutes, not the longer cooking implied for fresh shelled ones.
- The hinge: milk must not boilOnce the milk goes in, hold it at a bare simmer. Milk boiled hard with starchy corn scorches on the bottom and may separate.
- "The back of the range"On a wood or coal range the back was the coolest spot, used for long gentle cooking. On a modern burner that is the lowest setting.
- Dried cornDried sweet corn, sold as "dried sweet corn" or Pennsylvania Dutch corn, is not hominy or cornmeal and cannot be swapped for either. After an overnight soak it wants an hour or more of slow cooking, and it stays chewy by nature.
- Fat and seasoningFour tablespoons of butter for four cups of vegetables is generous by current habit. Two is plenty if the corn is sweet; the recipe in any case seasons at the end, after the butter goes in.
- YieldServes four to six as a side dish.
Succotash comes from the Narragansett msickquatash, boiled whole kernels of corn, and the dish is one of the clearest survivals of Native American cooking in the Anglo-American kitchen: corn and beans grown together, then cooked together. Many colonial and nineteenth-century versions were water-based and included salt pork, though milk and cream appear in some nineteenth-century receipts too; the milk and butter here belong to that richer line. The double set of instructions is worth noting on its own: the book still assumes a reader who might be working from dried sweet corn and beans put up the previous autumn rather than from anything fresh, and the direction to save the bean water for soup belongs to the same thrift.