[Sca-cooks] History of the "stew" that is Chili

Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
Tue Mar 22 12:19:58 PDT 2011


There's this information from Sharon Hudgins "Chili"  The Oxford  
Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.

The city first associated with chili was San Antonio, Texas, where the  
cooking of a chili-like dish was documented in the 1820s. By the 1880s  
Mexican women dressed in embroidered peasant blouses and full skirts  
were selling homemade chili, tamales, enchiladas, and beans from  
individual stands set up around San Antonio's Military Plaza, a  
bustling, open-air municipal market in the heart of the city. A  
colorful part of San Antonio's history, these vendors, known as “chili  
queens,” continued selling their spicy foods on the streets until  
1943, when public health regulations finally forced them out of  
business, putting an end to one of the city's culinary traditions.

This echos what  Huette wrote about in her post. Tolbert's book A Book  
of Red which was mentioned by Master A. is one of the sources for the  
information in this article.

Sharon Hudgins wrote an article titled “Red Dust: Powdered Chiles and  
Chili Powder.” In Spicing Up the Palate: Studies of Flavourings— 
Ancient and Modern,  Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery  which I'll  
also look at.

Johnnae


>
>
> From: lilinah
>
> Anyone know the history of chili, the American dish of beans and/or  
> meat, tomatoes, chili pepper, etc.? snipped
> So, is there a chili equivalent early on, before New World beans  
> made it to northern and eastern Europe?
> -- Ellen
> on the cusp of Oakland-Emeryville-Berkeley



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