Recipes provoke disputes among aficionados, some of whom insist that the word chili applies only to the basic dish, without beans and tomatoes.

[3] In writings from 1529, the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún described chili pepper-seasoned stews being consumed in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, now the location of Mexico City.

An English naval officer and explorer, George Francis Lyon, wrote in 1826 about eating dried beef in a chili sauce with Rancheros while travelling through northern Veracruz, near Pánuco:[5] I then joined a party of Rancheros who had assembled to kill a cow and cut her flesh into tasajo, —an operation which they performed with extraordinary skill and dispatch, separating the sinews from the flesh with anatomical precision.

I breakfasted with the Rancheros, when their work was done, on dry meat with chili sauce and piping hot tortillas served up in rapid succession.

Our second course was a dish of cow's blood stewed with sweet herbs: and having prefaced our meal by a glass of white brandy distilled in the Rancho, we all ate heartily.

French colonist Mathieu de Fossey had a similar experience in 1831 when he was served tasajo cooked in chili in the village of Jáltipan near Coatzacoalcos in southern Veracruz:[6] “That day we had a completely Indian meal, in which they served us tasajo cooked with chili, beans and tortillas.

In her 1843 book Life in Mexico, Scottish noblewoman Frances Erskine Inglis wrote about eating a dish called embarrado, a composition of meat and chili, while attending the rodeo (cattle roundup) and herradero (cattle branding celebration) in the village of Santiago in the state of Hidalgo in 1840:[7] ”The Indians had cooked meat under the stones for us, which I found horrible, smelling and tasting of smoke.

But we had also boiled fowls, and quantities of burning chili, hot tortillas, atole, or atolli, as the Indians call it, a species of cakes made of very fine maize and water, and sweetened with sugar or honey; embarrado, a favourite composition of meat and chili, very like mud, as the name imports, which I have not yet made up my mind to endure; quantities of fresh tunas, granaditas, bananas, aguacates, and other fruits, besides pulque, à discrétion.

American traveler Theodore Taylor Johnson also wrote about eating carne con chile while in San Blas, Nayarit in 1849:[8] Returning to the town we obtained a true Mexican dinner, consisting of jerked beef stewed with onions and plenty of cayenne pepper, which they call "carne con chile colorado".

[10] Unlike some other Texas foods, such as barbecued brisket, chili largely originated with working-class Tejana and Mexican women.

San Antonio was a tourist destination and helped Texas-style chili con carne spread throughout the South and West of the United States.

[12] Before World War II, hundreds of small, family-run chili parlors could be found throughout Texas and other states, particularly those in which émigré Texans had made new homes.

Cincinnati chili is a substantially different dish developed by Macedonian and Greek immigrants, deriving from their own culinary traditions.

It featured a chili-topped dish called a slinger: two cheeseburger patties, hash browns, and two eggs, and smothered in chili.

Hodge-branded locations remain, though Tully's Tap, a pub and restaurant in O'Fallon, Missouri, offers what it claims to be the original O.T.

Matt Weinstock, a Los Angeles newspaper columnist, once remarked that Fowler's chili "was reputed to open eighteen sinus cavities unknown to the medical profession".

Ernest Tubb, the country singer, was such a fan that one Texas hotel maintained a supply of Wolf Brand for his visits.

A few manufacturers, such as XLNT Foods and Dolores Canning in Southern California, continue to distribute brick chili to supermarkets.