Eat This Word: Succotash

by JBF Editors on August 04, 2009

WHAT? Daffy's favorite side dish. ("Suffering succotash!") Indians introduced colonists to this mix of beans and corn (the Indian version sometimes included bear meat) and gave the dish its name, which derives from msickquatash, Narraganset for boiled kernels of corn. In A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain listed succotash (along with possom, coon, and cobblers) among the food from home that he most craved while he was traveling. Ronald Reagan once used the word as a substitute for "Podunk" to mean a backwater place; in so doing, he incensed the 600 residents of Succotash Point, Rhode Island. Sadly, so many Americans were raised on loathsome frozen succotash vegetable mix, they've written off what food writer John Thorne has described as "a quintessential summer dish...with a wonderfully delicate flavor."

WHERE? Will Gilson's Beard House dinner

WHEN? August 4, 2009

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