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Chili Con Carni

A stew of ground steak, kidney beans, onions, tomatoes, horseradish, and red peppers simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chili Con Carni

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grind the steak coarsely.

  2. Place the ground steak in a pot with cold water.

  3. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  4. Cook for 30 minutes.

  5. Add the kidney beans, onions, tomatoes, horseradish, and red peppers.

  6. Cook for an additional 15 minutes.

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 + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + peppertop 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

Steak
Provides the main protein and meaty body of the chili.
Kidney beans
Add starch and texture that give the chili body and substance.
Canned tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that help form the chili's sauce.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that carries through the simmered dish.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after the boil. Foam rising from the steak contains proteins and impurities. Skimming it early keeps the broth clear and prevents a scummy, bitter flavour in the finished chili.

Swap the kidney beans

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, tomato, horseradish, 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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