History and Legends of
Chili
by Linda Stradley, author of "What's Cooking
America"
© copyright 2000 by Linda Stradley - All rights
reserved.
The only thing certain about the origins of chili is
that it did not originate in Mexico. Charles Ramsdell, a writer from San
Antonio in an article called San Antonio: An Historical and Pictorial
Guide, wrote: "Chili, as we know it in the U.S., cannot be found
in Mexico today except in a few spots which cater to tourists. If chili
had come from Mexico, it would still be there. For Mexicans, especially
those of Indian ancestry, do not change their culinary customs from one
generation, or even from one century, to another."
There are many legends and stories about where chili originated and
it is generally thought, by most historians, that the earliest versions
of chili were made by the very poorest people. J. C. Clopper, the first
American known to have remarked about San Antonio's chili carne, wrote
in 1926: "When they have to pay for their meat in the market, a very
little is made to suffice for a family; this is generally into a kind of
hash with nearly as many peppers as there are pieces of meat - this is
all stewed together."
17th
Century
1618 - According to an old
Southwestern American Indian legend and tale (several modern writer have
documented -or maybe just "passed along") this old story, 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?
18th Century
In
the late 1600s and early 1700s, a handful of colonists arrived from the
Canary Islands and settled in old La Villita just outside the Mission
San Antonio de Bejar (known today as The Alamo) to build churches and
cathedrals. The women of the village would make their "Spanish" stews at
home in copper kettles. Around sundown, the women would take the kettles
into the plaza and spread out their red cloths on the ground and build a
little fire to keep the meal hot. People passing by were summoned to
dine and they would sit on the ground and eat the "chili" from handmade
earthen dishes.
19th Century
Some
Spanish priests were said to be wary of the passion inspired by chile
peppers, assuming they were aphrodisiacs. The priest's warning probably
contributed to the dish's popularity.
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. 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 chilipiquíns, 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 prisions 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.
1880 - San Antonio was a wide-open town (a cattle town, a
railroad town, and an army town) and by day a municipal food market and
by night a wild and open place. Frank H. Bushick describes the market in
his book Glamorous Days as "an open air bazaar for fakers,
peddlers, and every variety of Bedouins of the night. . . The houses and
saloon bars in the adobe buildings on the four sides of the square were
concealed by thirsty humanity bellied up two rows deep."
Latino women nicknamed "Chili Queens" sold stew they called "chili"
made with dried red chiles and beef from open-air stalls at the Military
Plaza Mercado. In those days, the world "chili" referred strictly to the
pepper. They served a variation of simple, chile-spiked dishes (tamales,
tortillas, chili con carne, and enchiladas). A night was not considered
complete without a visit to one of these "chili queens." In 1943 they
were put out of business due to their inability to conform to sanitary
standards enforced in the town's restaurants.
1890 - Chili historians are not exactly certain who first
"invented" chili powder. It is agreed that the inventors of chili powder
deserve a slot in history close to Alfred Nobel (1933-1896), inventor of
dynamite.
The Fort Worth chili buffs give credit to DeWitt Clinton Pendery.
Pendery arrived in Fort Worth, Texas in 1870. It is said that local
cowboys jeered his elegant appearance (he was wearing a long frock coat
and a tall silk hat) as he stepped onto the dusty street. It is also
said that he was initiated into the town by a bullet whipping through
his coat. He casually collected his belongings and continued on his way,
earning immediate popular respect. By 1890, after his grocery store
burned down, he started selling his own unique blend of chiles to cafes,
hotels, and citizens under the name of Mexican Chili Supply Company.
Pendery's products are still sold today by members of his family.
Pendery wrote of the medicinal benefits of his condiments and its
acclamation from physicians: "The health giving properties of hot
chile peppers have no equal. They give tone to the alimentary canal
regulating the functions, giving a natural appetite and promoting health
by action of the kidneys, skin and lymphatics."
San Antonio buffs swear that chili powder was invented by William
Gebhardt, a German immigrant in New Braunfels, Texas (now a suburb of
San Antonio) around 1890. He registered his Eagle Brand Chili Powder
trademark in 1896, making it one of the oldest in the United States. In
1960, it was acquired by Beatrice Foods and is now known as Gebhardt
Mexican Foods Company. The blend today is unchanged and is still one of
the most popular brands used.
1893 - The Texas chili went national when Texas set up a state
chili booth at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
1895 - Lyman T. Davis of Texas made chili in downtown
Corsicana and delivered it by wagon to saloons where it was sold for
five cents a bowl with all the crackers you wanted. He later opened a
meat market where he sold his chili in brick form, usin the brand name
of Lyman's Famous Home Made Chili. In 1921, he started to can chili in
the back of his market and named it "Wolf Brand" in honor of his pet
wolf, Kaiser Bill. A picture of the wolf is still on the label. In the
1920s, Davis quit the chili business when his ranch was found to have
lots of oil. The company is now owned by The Quaker Oats Company.
20th
Century
Around the turn of the century, chili
joints appeared in Texas. By the 1920s, they were familiar all over the
West. The chili joints were usually no more than a shed or a room with a
counter and some stools. Usually a blanket was hung up to separate the
kitchen. The Dictionary of American Regional English describes
chili joints as: "A small cheap restaurant, particularly one that
served poor quality food."
1922 - Cincinnati style chili is quite different from its more
familiar Texas cousin. It is unique to the Cincinnati area and it was
created in 1922 by a Macedonian immigrant, Tom (Athanas) Kiradjieff. He
settled in Cincinnati with his brother, John, and opened a hot dog stand
with Greek food called the Empress, only to do a lousy business because
nobody there at the time knew anything about Greek food. So, it is said,
that they called their spaghetti "chili." He created a chili made with
Middle Eastern spices which could be served a variety of ways. His
"five-way" was a concoction of a mound of spaghetti topped with chili,
then with chopped onion, then red kidney beans, then shredded yellow
cheese, and served with oyster crackers and a side order of hot dogs
topped with shredded cheese.
1962 - Chasen's Restaurant in Hollywood, California probably
made the most famous chili. The owner of the restaurant, Dave Chasen,
kept the recipe a secret, entrusting it to no one. For years, he came to
the restaurant every Sunday to privately cook up a batch, which he would
freeze for the week, believing that the chili was best when reheated.
"It is a kind of bastard chili" was all that Dave Chasen would
divulge.
During the filming of the movie "Cleopatra" in Rome, Italy, famous
movie star, Elizabeth Taylor, had Chasen Restaurant in Hollywood,
California send 10 quarts of their famous chili to her. She supposedly
paid $200 to have it shipped to her in Rome.
Chauffeurs and studio people, actors and actresses would come to the
back door of Chasen's to buy and pick up the chili by the quart. Other
famous people craved this chili such as comedian and actor Jack Benny
(1894-1974) who ordered it by the quart. J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972),
former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who
considered it the best chili in the world, and Eleanor Roosevelt
(1894-1962) wife of the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, sought the recipe but was refused it (a complimentary order
was dispatched to her instead). It is said that Chasen's also send chili
to movie actor Clark Gable (1901-1960), when he was in the hospital (he
reportedly had it for dinner the night he died).
1967 - The first chili cook-off known to modern man took place
in 1967 in uninhabited Terlingua, Texas (once a thriving mercury-mining
town of 5,000 people). It was a two-man cook-off between Texas chili
champ Homer "Wick" Fowler (1909-1972), a Dallas and Denton newspaper
reporter, and H. Allen Smith (humorist and author), which ended in a
tie. The cook-off challenge started when H. Allen Smith wrote a story
for the Holiday mazaine titled Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I
Do, which claimed that on one in Texas could make proper chili. A
reader suggested that Fowler answer the challenge, which he did. The
cook-off competition ended in a tie vote when the tie-breaker judge
allowed someone to ram a spoonful of chili into his mouth and promptly
spit it all over the referee's foot and then he went into convulsions.
He rammed a handkerchief down his throat and pronouned himself unable to
go on and declared a one-year moratorium in the world championship chili
cook-off.
The International Chili Society was formed by Francis Tolbert
(1912-1984), famous journalist and author of A Bowl of Red, and
continued to hold its annual cook-off in Terlingua until 1975, when it
moved to Rosamound, California. Chili competitions are still held each
year in Terlingua.
So passionate are chili lovers that they hold competitions (some
local, some international). One organization is the Chili Appreciation
Socity International which has approximately 50 "pods" or clubs in the
United States and Canada and supports over 400 sanctioned chili cookoffs
involving thousands of participants each year. Chili competitions are
held on a circuit each year (much like the system used for tennis and
golf competitions).
SOURCES:
A Bowl of Red, by Frank X Tolbert, published by Texas A&M
University Press, 1953.
As American As Apple Pie, by Phillip Stephen Schulz, published by
Simon on Schuster, 1990.
Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices, by George
Leonard Herter & Berthe E. Herter, published by Herter's, Inc.,
1960.
Chasen's - Where Hollywood Dined, by Betty Goodwin, published by
Angel City Press, 1996.
Chili Madness - A Passionate Cookbook, by Jane Butel, published by
Workman Publishing, 1980.
Culinaria - The United States, A Culinary Discovery, by Randi
Danforth, Peter Feierabend, Gary Chassman, published by Konemann.
Cultural Readings: Colonization & Print in the Americas, by Peter
Martyr Vermigli,
http://www.library.upenn.edu/special/gallery/kislak/colonial/martyr1.htm,
an internet web site.
Dictionary of American Regional English, Vol. I, by Frederic G.
Cassidy, published by Belnap/Harvard University Press, 1985.
Fashionable Food - Seven Decades of Food Fads, by Sylvia Lovegren,
published by Simon & Schuster MacMillan Company, 1995.
Foodbook, by James Trager, published by Grossman Publishers, 1970.
Food From Harvest Festivals & Folk Fairs, by Anita Borghese,
published by Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1977.
Glamorous Days: Frontier and Pioneer Life - Texas, by Frank H.
Bushick, published by Naylor of San Antonio, Texas, 1934.
Pendery Gazette, http://www.penderys.com/2/index.html, an internet
web site.
Serious Pig, by John Thorne with Matt Lewis Thorne, published by
North Point Press, 1996.
The Chili Lover's Handbook, by Jack Arnold, published by Jack Arnold
and Associates, 1977.
The Dictionary of American Food & Drink, by John F. Mariani,
published by Ticknor & Fields, 1983.
The Handbook of Texas Online, join project of The General Libraries
at the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical
Association, 1997, 1998, 1999.
The Lady In Blue, Texas State Historical Association, Southwestern
Historical Quarterly, Vols I, II, XVI, LXXIX.
http://chico.rice.edu/armadillo/Projects/ladyblue.htm, an internet web
site.
The Ultimate Chili Cookbook, by W. C. Jameson, published by Republic
of Texas Press, 1999.