Succotash is a vegetable-and-bean dish traditionally combining corn with lima beans.
The dish has Indigenous North American roots. The word comes from a Narragansett term associated with cooked corn, and Native peoples taught colonists about corn and beans as important food crops. The combination was nutritionally useful because corn and beans complement one another as staple foods.
African American and Southern cooks incorporated succotash into regional home cooking, where it could be prepared with butter, onions, peppers, tomatoes, or pork. Recipes vary widely, but corn and lima beans remain the classic pairing. Fresh, frozen, or canned vegetables may be used.
Succotash is sometimes confused with ratatouille because both are vegetable dishes, but ratatouille is a French preparation centered on summer vegetables such as eggplant and zucchini. Succotash is identified by its corn-and-bean foundation, not by a particular cooking vessel or sauce.