succotash an American dish which requires cooking fresh corn kernels (see maize) and lima beans, separately, in boiling water until tender, after which these ingredients are mixed with each other and with a little butter (or salt pork, say some) and cooked until ready. This description is broadly true, but glosses over the fact that, as Evan Jones (1981) puts it: ‘there may be a dozen “authentic” ways to make succotash.’ He states, for example, that the oldest recorded recipe for succotash requires boiling two fowls as the first step and includes as ingredients turnip, potato, and corned beef and pork. Craigie and Hulbert (1938–44) give 1751 as the first reference in print (‘Mo[the]r dined with us upon Suckatash and Ham’); and their next reference from 1778 is to Succatosh, being corn and beans boiled together with bear’s flesh. The use of salt pork in early versions is well attested.
