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Summer Succotash
I CUP CANNED MILK, OR 12 EARS OF CORN I QUART LIMA BEANS 14 POUND BEEF CREAM BUTTER SALT AND PEPPER Boil corn, beef and beans together until tender. Then remove corn and cut or scrape from cobs, drain beans and mix corn with them, together with 1/2 cup of the pot liquor, stir in cream, butter and seasonings, return to fire and heat just under boiling point.
Succotash was the Narragansett Indian's name for this dish of corn and beans, which usually had meat in it, and that made by the early New Englanders was commonly stewed up with a biddy.
A camp version of the oldest American vegetable dish, written for a pot over a fire. The ingredient list is compressed, and the cooking order needs rearranging for anyone using produce rather than a long-simmered camp kettle.
- The milk line"Canned milk" in this period usually meant evaporated milk, carried because it kept without ice. Cream appears again lower in the list, so either one works; a cup of evaporated milk or half a cup of heavy cream will finish the pot.
- The beefThe quantity as printed reads as a quarter pound, which is a flavouring rather than a meat course. Use a piece of chuck or shin with some connective tissue, cut small, and understand it is there to make the pot liquor taste of something.
- Cook in stages, not togetherBoiling corn, beans and beef in one pot until all are tender means the corn is ruined by the time the beef gives up. Simmer the beef 45-60 minutes first, add the limas for 20-25 minutes, then the corn ears for the last 5-7.
- A quart of lima beansMost likely fresh shelled limas, though the recipe does not say; shelling a quart takes a good deal more in the pod than the finished quart suggests. Dried limas need soaking overnight and a longer simmer; frozen baby limas need about 10 minutes and should go in near the end.
- Twelve earsTwelve ears of corn yield about 6 cups of kernels, which is a large pot. Scraping the cobs with the back of a knife after cutting releases the starchy milk and is what thickens the finished dish.
- Pot liquorThe half cup of cooking liquid is doing real work here, carrying the beef flavour into the vegetables. Do not substitute plain water for it.
- The last step is the hingeOnce the cream or evaporated milk goes in, hold the pot just under the boiling point, as the recipe directs. A hard boil after the dairy is added can curdle it and dull the corn.
- YieldAs written this feeds eight to ten as a side, or six as a main dish with bread. It halves cleanly.
Succotash comes from the Narragansett msickquatash, generally glossed as broken or boiled corn kernels, and the note appended to this recipe is broadly correct: the dish reached English colonists in New England as a one-pot stew of corn and beans, usually with meat in it. The "biddy" mentioned is a hen — an old farm word for a domestic fowl. The pairing is agricultural before it is culinary: corn and beans were grown together in the same hills and so cooked together.