chile / chili / chilli / etc.

[prettygoodword]

Because of the overlapping spelling variations, this is gonna be confusing. Also, I have Opinions on this.


chile (US) or chili (US) or chilli (UK & India) or chilly (some Commonwealth) (CHIL-ee) - n., the spicy fresh or dried fruit of any of several cultivated varieties of capsicum peppers (genus Capsicum) used in cooking; (chiefly UK and so chilli) any pepper whether spicy or mild.

chili or chile or chilli (CHIL-ee) - n., a stew of meat and chiles.



Thanks, WikiMedia!

Many culinary authorities (as well as every informant I've talked with living in the southwestern US) insist on using chile for the pepper and chili for the stew, but this distinction isn’t universal even in the US. The wild ancestors of the peppers (which are various cultivars of five or six species) were native to the highlands of Peru and Bolivia and first domesticated there, then spread through the Americas in all tropical and warm temperate regions. When Columbus encountered them in the Caribbean, he called them peppers because they were spicy like the black pepper long known to Europeans, and that name carried over into English. Spaniards in Mexico eventually took over the Nahautl name chīlli as chile, and that too entered English in the 17th century. Versions of the stew, called in Spanish chile con carne, "meat with chile," were cooked by Nahaus from before European contact, and continues to be made throughout Mexico and Mexican-settled areas -- as chili con carne, later shortened to chili, it was popularized throughout the US thanks to some food stalls from San Antonio at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

And while we're here, my recipe.

---L.

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

That, of course, is before you get into the bottomless regional and cultural wankapalooza over the definition of true chili; I’m told that the strictest purists don’t even want beans in their Bowls Of Red.

Or the fact that the name of the country (considerably south of where the peppers originated) bears no etymological relationship.

(The Wikipedia entry yields this intriguing possible false cognate:

Other theories say Chile may derive its name from a Native American word meaning either 'ends of the earth' or 'sea gulls'; from the Mapuche word chilli, which may mean 'where the land ends' or from the Quechua chiri,'cold', or tchili, meaning either 'snow' or "the deepest point of the Earth". The Quechua etymology bears a startling coincidental resemblance to the English “chilly”!)

[prettygoodword]

I deliberately avoid the cultural wars over what makes a "true" chili. Heck, I'll accept vegetarian chili as chili (though not as chili con carne).

ETA: Though do I point out that allowing Certain Parties to call themselves "strictest purists" is ceding them too much ground, from a rhetorical effectiveness point of view.

ETA2: And, actually, Chile is right in the neighborhood of where capsicum originated -- it's way south of where the name originated, though.