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Mexican Chili Sauce

A sauce of veal, colored beans, butter, lard, flour, tomato juice, and pepper, simmered together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mexican Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cook the colored beans until tender.

Make the veal and gravy

  1. In a skillet, heat the butter and lard over medium heat.

  2. Add the veal pieces and fry until browned, then remove the meat.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until browned to make a gravy.

  4. Add the tomato juice and small pepper to the gravy.

  5. Return the browned veal to the skillet and simmer covered until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve the beans on a dish and pour the meat and gravy over them.

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

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Colored beans
Provide the bulk of the dish and absorb the meat and gravy.
Veal
Supplies the main meat, browned for flavor and cooked through in the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the drippings into a gravy as it browns.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor for frying the veal and starting the gravy.
Lard
Adds fat for frying the veal, helping it brown well.
Tomatoes
Contribute tomato juice for acidity and moisture in the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the drippings. Cooking the flour until it is browned develops nutty flavor and color, and it must be stirred constantly so it does not scorch. Scorched flour tastes bitter and spoils the gravy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, veal, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, veal, butter, flour, pepper. 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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