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Rice Chili Con Carne

A spicy stew of mutton and rice cooked with tomatoes, onions, and chili.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Rice Chili Con Carne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove tough portions of the mutton and cut it into walnut-sized cubes.

  2. Roll the mutton cubes in flour and brown them in a skillet with the drippings and chopped onion.

Simmer and serve

  1. Once the meat and onions are lightly browned and tender, add the tomatoes, water, chili pepper or powder, and rice.

  2. Simmer the mixture on low heat for 15 minutes after all ingredients are combined.

  3. Serve hot.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 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

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering after browning.
Drippings
Fat for browning the meat and onions, adding richness and savory flavor.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it browns, adding aroma and depth to the base.
Sieved tomatoes
Adds acidity, body and moisture that form the chili sauce.
Cooked rice
Absorbs liquid during simmering, thickening the chili and adding body.

The step that matters

Browning the floured mutton. Flour-coated meat browns well in hot fat, building deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed meat tastes flat and can turn gluey in the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, tomato, pepper, rice, garlic):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, tomato, pepper, rice, garlic. 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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