Skip to main content
Main

Mexican Chili

A chili made with beans, ground beef, pork, suet, garlic, onion, cumin, tomatoes, chili pepper, and salt.

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

Why it works: Beans and cumin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,188 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Mexican Chili

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the beans and meats over low heat.

  2. Add the minced garlic, chopped onion, cumin seed, and tomatoes. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. About an hour before serving, stir in the chili pepper.

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 + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,188 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Cumin + tomatotop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,272 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Make up the bulk of the chili and soak up the seasoned liquid as they cook.
Ground hamburger
Adds savory, browned meat flavor and a rich, tender texture to the chili.
Ground pork
Adds richness and body, deepening the meaty flavor of the chili.
Ground suet
Adds fat that carries flavor and keeps the meat mixture moist as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and liquid that help build the sauce and balance the rich meats.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth as it softens into the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, garlic, cumin, tomato, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, garlic, cumin, tomato, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes