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Chili Con Carne

A skillet dish of steak, onions, kidney beans, tomatoes, butter, salt, and chili powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chili Con Carne

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chili

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and fry until light brown.

  3. Stir in the chopped round steak and cook until browned.

  4. Add the kidney beans, tomatoes, salt, and chili powder.

  5. Cook everything together for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with buttered crackers.

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 + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Kidney beans + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together821 recipes

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

  3. Onion + kidney beanstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Provides the meat base and browns to add savory flavor to the chili.
Onions
Soften and turn light brown, adding sweetness and aroma to the base.
Kidney beans
Add body and texture to the chili as they simmer with the other ingredients.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity, forming the liquid that the chili cooks in.
Butter
Carries the heat and fat that softens the onions and helps the meat brown.

The step that matters

Browning the round steak. Meat that is crowded or steamed in liquid will gray instead of browning. Browning creates Maillard flavors that give the chili its savory depth, so the meat should be cooked until well colored before the beans and tomatoes go in.

Swap the kidney beans

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, 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.

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