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Succotash is a North American vegetable dish consisting primarily of sweet corn with or other . The name succotash is derived from the Narragansett word sahquttahhash, which means "broken corn kernels".Trumbull (1903). Entry for *msickquatash (p. 67; archive p. n194): (Narr.) n.pl. 'boiled corn whole' (i.e. mo-soquttahhash, not broken small or pounded?). See soh-quttahham. When broken, soquttahhash without the prefix. Hence the common name succotash, improperly applied, however, to the unbroken corn. Other ingredients may be added, such as onions, potatoes, turnips, tomatoes, bell peppers, corned beef, salt pork, or okra. Combining a grain with a legume provides a dish that is high in all essential amino acids.
By the 1760s English soldier and explorer Jonathan Carver indicated succotash was prepared by numerous tribes of midwestern North America:
One dish however, which answers nearly the same purpose as bread, is in use among the Meskwaki, the Sauk people, and the more eastern nations, where Indian corn grows, which is not only much esteemed by them, but it is reckoned extremely palatable by all the Europeans who enter their dominions. This is composed of their unripe corn as before described, and beans in the same state, boiled together with bears flesh, the fat of which moistens the pulse, and renders it beyond comparison delicious. They call this food Succatosh.Jonathan Carver, Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America, in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768 (John Coakley Lettsom, ed.), p.263, (3d ed., London, 1781) (retrieved May 5, 2024).British colonists adapted the dish as a stew in the 17th century. Composed of ingredients unknown in Europe at the time, it gradually became a standard meal in the cuisine of New England(Paywall) and is a traditional dish of many Thanksgiving celebrations in the region,Morgan, Diane and John Rizzo. The Thanksgiving Table: Recipes and Ideas to Create Your Own Holiday Tradition. Pg. 122. as well as in Pennsylvania and other states.
Because of the relatively inexpensive and more readily available ingredients, the dish was popular during the Great Depression in the United States. It was sometimes cooked in a casserole form, often with a light pie crust on top as in a traditional pot pie.
After the abolition of slavery in the United States, freed slaves in the American South returned to Africa and introduced the dish to the region.
Catherine Beecher's 19th-century recipe includes beans boiled with corn cobs from which the kernels have been removed. The kernels are added later, after the beans have boiled for several hours. The corn cobs are removed and the finished stew, in proportions of two parts corn to one part beans, is thickened with flour.
Henry Ward Beecher's recipe, published in an 1846 issue of Western Farmer and Gardner, adds salt pork, which he says is "an essential part of the affair."
In some parts of the American South, any mixture of prepared with lima beans and topped with lard or butter is considered succotash.
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