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Tamale Stuffing

A savory filling made from cooked meat, chile sauce, onion, garlic, and optional olives and raisins, used for tamales.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Tamale Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine the chopped meat, chile sauce, onion, and garlic.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. If desired, stir in the olives and raisins.

  4. Serve as a stuffing for tamales.

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. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken, pork, or beef
Provides the bulk of the filling and its savory, meaty body.
Chile sauce
Supplies the liquid and the main chile flavor that coats the meat.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth as it softens in the simmer.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 10 minutes. Boiling reduces the liquid and lets the chile sauce and meat flavors meld. If the filling stays too wet, it will make tamale dough soggy and hard to hold together.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, sauce, onion, clove, garlic, olive):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, onion, clove, garlic, olive. 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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