Given (1) a homesick yearning for New World food and (2) the local availability of cheap bacon, I have been making succotash from corn, white beans, and rashers, prompted by Joel Barlow’s description in “The Hasty Pudding”:
Delicious grain! whatever form it take,
To roast or boil, to smother or to bake,
In every dish ’tis welcome still to me,
But most, my Hasty Pudding, most in thee.
Let the green succotash with thee contend,
let beans and corn their sweetest juices blend,
Let butter drench them in its yellow tide,
And a long slice of bacon grace their side.
That Barlow plumps for hasty pudding over succotash is immaterial; the point is to let literature guide our cooking, and vice versa.
Advertisement
