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Chili-Con-Carne

A spicy beef stew made with chili peppers, onions, garlic, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chili-Con-Carne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chilies

  1. Wash the chili peppers and remove the stems.

  2. Boil the peppers in a saucepan with boiling water until soft, then mash through a wire sieve.

Make the chili

  1. Chop the onion and garlic finely.

  2. In a saucepan, fry the onion, garlic, and chopped beefsteak in lard until well done.

  3. Add salt to taste and stir in the mashed chili peppers.

  4. Simmer the mixture over low heat for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Chili peppers
Provide the main body, flavour and colour of the sauce once mashed.
Beefsteak
Supplies protein and meaty texture as it browns and cooks through in the fat.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens and browns in the fat.
Garlic
Adds aroma and pungent flavour that mellows during frying and simmering.
Lard
Carries heat for frying and adds richness and a rounded mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Simmering the mixture over low heat. Gentle simmering lets the mashed peppers and meat thicken and blend while avoiding scorching on the pan base, which would make the sauce taste bitter and burnt.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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

“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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