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Quick Chili Con Came

A quick beef chili with onions, green peppers, tomato soup, kidney beans, and chili powder served over toast or rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Quick Chili Con Came

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the onion in shortening or butter.

  2. Add ground meat and brown it.

  3. Stir in the green peppers and tomato soup, cooking until the peppers are tender.

  4. Add the cooked kidney beans and heat thoroughly.

  5. Season with chili powder to taste.

  6. Serve on toasted bread or with rice.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + kidney beanstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together821 recipes

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

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

Round steak
Provides the meaty body of the chili and browns to add savoury flavour.
Kidney beans
Add body, texture and substance to the chili.
Tomato soup
Supplies liquid and tomato flavour that forms the sauce.
Onion
Softens and adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the base.
Green peppers
Soften during cooking and add fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour.

Swap the kidney beans

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

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

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