Skip to main content
Main

Chili Con Carnie

A hearty stew of bacon, beef, beans, peppers, tomatoes, okra, and spices simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and okra share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 66 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Chili Con Carnie

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the fat and meat

  1. In a kettle, fry the chopped suet for 20 minutes, stirring to avoid scorching.

  2. Add the diced bacon and lean beef, cooking until browned.

Simmer

  1. Stir in the parboiled beans, water, red pepper corns, chopped sweet peppers, tomatoes, okra, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Simmer slowly for 4 hours, adding water as needed.

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. Beans + okratop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  3. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meat, which browns for savory flavor and becomes tender during long simmering.
Suet
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives the chili a rich mouthfeel.
Bacon
Adds rendered fat and smoky, savory flavor to the pot.
Chili beans or black kidney beans
Add body and substance, absorbing the surrounding flavors as they cook.
Tomatoes
Supply moisture and acidity that give the sauce its base and brightness.
Okra
Releases natural starch during simmering, helping thicken the chili.

The step that matters

Frying the suet. Suet can scorch on the bottom of the kettle if left unstirred, and scorched fat turns bitter and spoils the whole pot. Stirring keeps it rendering evenly over the heat.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, beans, pepper, corn, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrathe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, beans, pepper, corn, tomato. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes