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Making Chile Con Carne

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cumin and oregano match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Making Chile Con Carne

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grind the jerked beef between two stones or use a meat grinder.

  2. Open the chili peppers, remove the seeds, and moisten them.

  3. Grind the moistened chili peppers into a paste.

  4. Mix the chili paste with the ground beef.

  5. Add the chopped onion, minced garlic, tomato pulp, and spices.

  6. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cumin + oreganotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Cumin + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Oregano + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cumin + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,306 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cumin, oregano, clove, garlic, onion, pepper, beef):

  1. Eggplantfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cumin, oregano, clove, garlic, onion, pepper, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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