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Mexican Chili Con Carne

A hearty stew of ground beef and pork with beans, tomatoes, peppers, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mexican Chili Con Carne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans in cold water for several hours, then boil until tender, draining off the liquid.

Make the chili

  1. Combine the pork, beef, green pepper, butter or drippings, and onion in a skillet; simmer until tender, then brown.

  2. Add the strained tomatoes and stir well.

  3. Mix the chili powder, salt, white pepper, and mustard together, then add to the skillet.

  4. Cook for 5 minutes after combining all ingredients, then serve hot; add more water if the mixture is too thick.

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

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

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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

Lean beef and pork
Provide the main meat texture and savory browned flavor once cooked.
Kidney or chili beans
Add body, starchy texture and bulk that makes the dish hearty.
Strained tomatoes
Supply acidity and liquid that form the sauce base.
Butter or drippings
Carries fat for browning the meat and onion and adds richness.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns in the fat.

The step that matters

Simmer and brown the meat before adding tomatoes. Browning the meat and onion in fat builds deep savory flavor through the Maillard reaction. Adding tomatoes too early steams the meat instead of browning it, leaving a flatter taste.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, beef, pork, pepper, 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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