Brimstone, Hasty Pudding and Succotash...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I love looking things up in my dictionary. And what I find surprising is the meaning of words people just take for granted because they are now cliché. I offer three examples of what I am talking about: Brimstone, Hasty Pudding and Succotash.

Brimstone simply means sulfur. Not even hot sulfur, just the element alone. Of course in the phrase “fire and brimstone” the sulfur would be burning hot. But by itself, it just means sulfur. Weird, no?

Hasty pudding means cornmeal mush. As you know (in Yankee Doodle), Father and I went down to camp along with Captain Goodin. And there we found the men and boys as thick as hasty pudding–i.e., corn meal mush. Get it? It was called “hasty” BTW because it took only c. 40 min. to make–which for the times was rather fast. Interesting.

Succotash comes from Native Americans. It is basically just corn (what you British dopers would call “maize”) and beans with added fat. Actually I started looking into these recipes about ten years ago. And they can get quite complex. Bacon or salt pork is sometimes the added fat. Okra is sometimes added as a natural thickener. I even saw a recipe once that added shredded cabbage. I have still been looking for that one. It sounds interesting. No luck so far. If “succotash” sounds too trite for you, FYI the Native Americans called it misquatash. And 19th Century cookbooks usu. corrupted the name to “circuit hash”. Vegetarian versions are possible of course. And FWIW, the Native Americans made it with kidney beans, corn and bear grease.

I have a question too. Did any of you dopers ever wonder what these words mean? I am really curious. And indeed, did any of you already know what these words meant? I really want to know:).

Thank you in advance to all who view and/or reply:)

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Hasty pudding == Polenta

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CORRECTION:
I was trying to recall what the Frugal Gourmet called it (i.e., Succotash). Actually, “misquatash” may not be correct. I looked it up, and the Frugal Gourmet called it “Misacquetash”. BTW, the actual Native American name is “msíckquatash”.

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I knew what brimstone and hasty pudding are, but I thought succotash was some kind of weird coleslaw. I wonder where I got that idea from.

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I knew about brimstone. I knew succotash was some kind of food, but that’s all, and I’d never heard of hasty pudding.

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I knew what succotash was (around here it’s normally corn and lima beans), and I knew what brimstone was, but wasn’t sure about the hasty pudding–I thought it was bread pudding.

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I just thought succotash went through an inordinate amount of sufferin’.

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Thufferin’ actually.

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And it’s not succotash that thuffers, it’s thuccotash

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More seriously, succotash in our house is corn with lima beans. Good combo, if you use the big Fordhook limas rather than the more common baby limas.

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Just a trivial add-on to your OP, brimstone is included in this often-mentioned description of hellish things because of its’ rank odor. Sulfur stinks like few other substances do, and the idea was that Hell was not just unimaginably hot, but it had a horribly nasty stink about it as well.

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succotash - creamed corned and lima beans, been that way all my life and I refuse to accept any variations.
Brimstone - yep, I knew that.

Hasty pudding - sounds nasty (because I went on the assumption it wasn’t quick-set butterscotch pudding). Never wondered what it actually was. Now that I know…still sounds nasty.