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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - History of Chili con Carne

Posted: 7/27/2015 9:40:01 PM EDT

Chili. One of arfcom's top tier meals (after bacon, of course). Chili is discussed and argued about here, but until now, we have not had a treatment of chili using factually based historical data points.

So how did chili start?

One researcher, Linda Stradley, says that the origins of the dish are lost in history, but gives some sample creation myths:

"According to an old Southwestern American Indian legend and tale (several modern writer have documented - or maybe just passed along) it is said that the first recipe for chili con carne was put on paper in the 17th century by a beautiful nun, Sister Mary of Agreda of Spain. She was mysteriously known to the Indians of the Southwest United States as "La Dama de Azul," the lady in blue. Sister Mary would go into trances with her body lifeless for days. When she awoke from these trances, she said her spirit had been to a faraway land where she preached Christianity to savages and counseled them to seek out Spanish missionaries.

It is certain that Sister Mary never physically left Spain, yet Spanish missionaries and King Philip IV of Spain believed that she was the ghostly "La Dama de Azul" or "lady in blue" of Indian Legend. It is said that sister Mary wrote down the recipe for chili which called for venison or antelope meat, onions, tomatoes, and chile peppers. No accounts of this were ever recorded, so who knows?

...

1850 - Records were found by Everrette DeGolyer (1886-1956), a Dallas millionaire and a lover of chili, indicating that the first chili mix was concocted around 1850 by Texan adventurers and cowboys as a staple for hard times when traveling to and in the California gold fields and around Texas. Needing hot grub, the trail cooks came up with a sort of stew. They pounded dried beef, fat, pepper, salt, and the chile peppers together into stackable rectangles which could be easily rehydrated with boiling water. This amounted to "brick chili" or "chili bricks" that could be boiled in pots along the trail. DeGolyer said that chili should be called "chili a la Americano" because the term chili is generic in Mexico and simply means a hot pepper. He believed that chili con carne began as the "pemmican of the Southwest."

It is said that some trail cooks planted pepper seeds, oregano, and onions in mesquite patches (to protect them from foraging cattle) to use on future trail drives. It is thought that the chile peppers used in the earliest dishes were probably chilipiquín0, which grow wild on bushes in Texas, particularly the southern part of the state.

There was another group of Texans known as "Lavanderas," or "Washerwoman," that followed around the 19th-century armies of Texas making a stew of goat meat or venison, wild marjoram, and chile peppers.

1860 - Residents of the Texas prisons in the mid to late 1800s also lay claim to the creation of chili. They say that the Texas version of bread and water (or gruel) was a stew of the cheapest available ingredients (tough beef that was hacked fine and chiles and spices that was boiled in water to an edible consistency). The "prisoner's plight" became a status symbol of the Texas prisons and the inmates used to rate jails on the quality of their chili. The Texas prison system made such good chili that freed inmates often wrote for the recipe, saying what they missed most after leaving was a really good bowl of chili."

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Chili/ChiliHistory.htm

The International Chili Society has its own anecdotal conjectures:

"There may not be an answer [to the argument over where the first bowl was made; and by whom]. There are, however, certain facts that one cannot overlook. The mixture of meat, beans, peppers, and herbs was known to the Incas, Aztecs, and Mayan Indians long before Columbus and the conquistadores.

Fact: Chile peppers were used in Cervantes's Spain and show up in great ancient cuisines of China, India, Indonesia, Italy, the Caribbean, France, and the Arab states.

Fact: Don Juan de Onate entered what is now New Mexico in 1598 and brought with him the green chile pepper. It has grown there for the nearly four hundred years since.

Fact: Canary Islanders, transplanted in San Antonio as early as 1723, used local peppers, wild onions, garlic, and other spices to concoct pungent meat dishes - improvising upon ones they had cooked for generations in their native land, where the chile pepper also grew.

Exit fact, enter conjecture.

There is little doubt that cattle drivers and trail hands did more to popularize the dish throughout the Southwest than anybody else, and there is a tale that we heard one frosty night in a Texican bar in Marfa, Texas, about a range cook who made chili along all the great cattle trails of Texas. He collected wild oregano, chile peppers, wild garlic, and onions and mixed it all with the fresh-killed beef or buffalo - or jackrabbit, armadillo, rattlesnake, or whatever he had at hand - and the cowhands ate it like ambrosia. And to make sure he had an ample supply of native spices wherever he went, he planted gardens along the paths of the cattle drives - mostly in patches of mesquite - to protect them from the hooves of the marauding cattle. The next time the drive went by there, he found his garden and harvested the crop, hanging the peppers and onions and oregano to dry on the side of the chuck wagon. The cook blazed a trail across Texas with tiny, spicy gardens.

As cattle trail chili grew in popularity throughout the tiny Texas trail towns, so too, did its devotees. Frank and Jesse James fell prey to its taste and are said to have eaten a few bowls of "red" before pulling many of their bank jobs. At least one town, it is noted, was spared from their shooting and looting by the local chili parlor. Fort Worth had a chili joint just north of town, and the James boys rode in there just for the chili, vowing never to rob their bank because "anyplace that has a chili joint like this just oughta' be treated better."

http://www.chilicookoff.com/History/History_of_Chili.asp

The website Recipe Source has its take on matters:

"The first “chili” recipes appeared in West Texas at the turn of the century. They may have had their origin from old Mexican recipes, but since most cowboys couldn't read...or for that matter, cook very good, chili most probably got it’s start due to the availability of spices and other ingredients available in the area. A lot of ingredients available to us now were just not available then. Most chili consisted of beef, cumin, pepper, sugar, paprika, garlic, and masa to thicken. Tomatoes were seasonal and usually not available. Chili powder was not manufactured at the time...They used dried chili’s (spanish for peppers)...most west texas cowboys were Mexican. Most of the original chili did not have beans due to the time required to soak and cook them...chuck wagons did not appear til later in history and even then, on most ranches, the cowboy was on his own and didn't have time to watch beans all day."

http://www.recipesource.com/soups/chili/00/rec0095.html

You might ask, "BNR, what sayeth the muse Clio regarding beans or no beans?"

Now, as we have seen in this extensively researched thesis, chili has been consumed by such individuals as cowboys, prisoners, and ghostly spirits. We must add to this list--- poor persons.

"The most likely explanation for the origin of chili con carne in Texas comes from the heritage of Mexican food combined with the rigors of life on the Texas frontier. Most historians agree that the earliest written description of chili came from J.C. Clopper, who lived near Houston. Hew worte of visiting San Antonio in 1828: "When they [poor fmailies of San Antonio] have to lay for their meat in the market, a very little is made to suffice for the family; it is generally cut into a kind of hash with nearly as many peppers as there are pieces of meat--this is all stewed together." Except for this one quote, which does not mention the dish by name, historians of heat can find no documented evidence of chili in Texas before 1880. Around that time in San Antonio, a municipal market--El Mercado--was operating in Military Plaza. Historian Charles Ramsdell noted that "the first rickety chili stands" were set up in this marketplace, with bols o'red sold by women who were called "chili queens."...A bowl o'red cost visitors like O. Henry and William Jennings Bryan a mere dime and was served with bread and a glass of water...The fame of chili con carne began to spread and the dish soon became a major tourist attraction...At the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, a bowl o'red was availabe at the "San Antonio Chili Stand."

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodmexican.html

As we have seen, poor people cannot afford to have enough meat in their dishes. Now we look to Science, which tells us that beans are the "Poor Person's Meat."

"Often called the "meat of the poor" for the affordable protein it provides, the crop [beans] is a vital foundation of food security for more than 400 million people in the developing world. Beans are a highly nutritious food, offering protein, fiber, complex carbohydrates, vitamins, and other micronutrients."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150324205653.htm

Now, we use elementary logic skills:

Poor persons have eaten chili since its foundational period.
Poor persons cannot afford to eat meat dishes and must use beans- the "meat of the poor"
Therefore, it is acceptable for poor persons to put beans in chili.

QED

Posted: 7/27/2015 9:58:29 PM EDT

[#1]

Damn good thing I'm poor.

Posted: 7/27/2015 10:04:26 PM EDT

[#2]

Chili, a sign of social status.

That was a very good read

Posted: 7/27/2015 10:10:28 PM EDT

[#3]

Even for the poor it isn't chili if it's got beans. It's seasoned beans

Posted: 7/27/2015 11:46:24 PM EDT

[#4]

Best Chili thread I have ever read! Good job OP!

Posted: 7/28/2015 6:46:54 PM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:
Fact: Chile peppers were used in Cervantes's Spain and show up in great ancient cuisines of China, India, Indonesia, Italy, the Caribbean, France, and the Arab states.

View Quote

Chili peppers originated in the New World and didn't make their way out of the Americas until the 1500's. Along time ago, but hardly ancient.

Posted: 7/28/2015 7:15:51 PM EDT

[#6]

deliciously inspiring thread, thanks for sharing!

Posted: 10/20/2015 11:33:47 PM EDT

[#7]

OP, you need to get a copy of "A Bowl of Red" by Frank X. Tolbert.

Posted: 11/11/2015 8:50:32 AM EDT

[#8]

Quote History

Quoted:
Best Chili thread I have ever read! Good job OP!

View Quote

Agreed. Finally some facts rather than the tired old beans vs no beans dogma we usually see.

I've had chilli with sirloin and venison, but my chilli mostly consists of ground beef or chicken and beans (flame away

) because although I'm not poor, I'm not spending a weeks worth of groceries on chilli ingredients. It's good, not great. But as long as the spices are there no one seems to care.... But this also ain't Texas

Posted: 11/11/2015 10:21:45 AM EDT

[#9]

Quote History

Quoted:

Agreed. Finally some facts rather than the tired old beans vs no beans dogma we usually see.

I've had chilli with sirloin and venison, but my chilli mostly consists of ground beef or chicken and beans (flame away

) because although I'm not poor, I'm not spending a weeks worth of groceries on chilli ingredients. It's good, not great. But as long as the spices are there no one seems to care.... But this also ain't Texas

View Quote View All Quotes

View All Quotes

Quote History

Quoted:

Quoted:
Best Chili thread I have ever read! Good job OP!

Agreed. Finally some facts rather than the tired old beans vs no beans dogma we usually see.

I've had chilli with sirloin and venison, but my chilli mostly consists of ground beef or chicken and beans (flame away

) because although I'm not poor, I'm not spending a weeks worth of groceries on chilli ingredients. It's good, not great. But as long as the spices are there no one seems to care.... But this also ain't Texas

Put whatever you want in chicken "chili". Lol. It's not going to confuse anyone who knows chili.
I'm a no beaner, because I don't like beans. Not I don't like beans in chili, I just don't like beans.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - History of Chili con Carne

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