Why it works: Garlic and beer work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 552 recipes mention both. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Make the chili
Cook ground round, ground pork, onions, bell pepper, garlic, and jalapenos for 8 minutes.
Add chili powder and cook, stirring, for 1 minute.
Stir in tomatoes with their juice, beer, tomato paste, salt, cumin, oregano and bay leaves.
Bring to a simmer, stirring often.
Reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 2 hours.
Thicken and serve
In a small bowl, stir together cornmeal and ½ cup chili until smooth.
Stir cornmeal mixture into chili and cook until thickened, about 5 minutes.
Place sour cream, pickled jalapenos, cheddar cheese and onions in separate dishes.
This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.
Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Garlic + beertop 9% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together552 recipes
Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
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Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together29,030 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Tomato + cumintop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together3,272 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Jalapeno + cumintop 2% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together688 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Garlic + tomatotop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together14,075 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lean ground round
- Browns and provides the meaty body of the chili.
- Ground pork
- Adds fat, which carries flavor and keeps the meat moist.
- Cornmeal
- Thickens the chili as it cooks, giving it a fuller body.
- Tomato paste
- Concentrates tomato flavor and adds body to the sauce.
- Beer
- Adds malty depth and liquid that reduces during the long simmer.
The step that matters
Thickening with the cornmeal mixture. Cornmeal thickens quickly and can clump if added dry or undiluted. Stirring it into a smooth slurry first and then cooking it through lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken the chili without lumps.
Flavor stand-ins for the jalapeno
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, pepper, garlic, tomato, beer, cumin):
- Oreganobetter flavor fit
- Corianderbetter flavor fit
- Thymebetter flavor fit
- Jalapenothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, pepper, garlic, tomato, beer, cumin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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