Chili historian Everett Lee DeGolyer was the owner of The Saturday Review of Literature, and was also, according to H. Allen Smith, “a world traveler, a gourmet, and the Solomon of the chili bowl.” Here is the historian’s recipe in his own words.

Ingredients

• 4 cloves garlic, chopped

• 1 onion, chopped

• 2½ cups fat rendered from beef suet

• 3 pounds center-cut steak (Trim and cut into cubes of less than ½ inch dimension. Lazy people

• grind meat in a food chopper using only the coarse knife.)

• 2 cups water, or the liquid in which the chiles have been boiled

• 2 to 12 pods of chile colorado [New Mexican], according to taste. If you are muy fuerte, use more. 1 teaspoon of comino seeds (cumin in English, or kummel if you understand it better)

• 1 teaspoon oregano (marjoram)

• 1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Brown the garlic and onion in the fat, add meat, and cook until gray (not brown) in color.

Add 2 cups of water and let simmer 1 hour.

Take pods of dried chile, wash, stem, and remove seeds. Put to boil in cold water and boil slowly until the skins slip easily, usually 45 minutes. Rub the pulp through a colander or sieve to make a smooth paste. You should now have ½ to 3/4 cup of pulp. Chile powder, prepared commercially, may be substituted for the pulp at the equivalent of one heaping tablespoon of chile powder for 2 pods of chile.

Rub comino seeds and oregano to a powder, toasting if need be. Add chile pulp, comino, oregano, and salt to the meat and cook slowly for 1 hour.

Nowadays it’s easy to re-create the chili that Wick used in the first cook-off against H. Allen Smith–just buy some of the famous Wick Fowler 2-Alarm Chili Mix. Or, you can follow the recipe below, which chili legend holds is Wick&rquo;s original version that he cooked in Terlingua in 1967. Remember to remove the Japanese chiles and the chilipiquins before serving. If this chili is too hot, Wick recommended drinking a pint of buttermilk.

Ingredients

• 3 pounds chili-grind beef, mostly lean

• 1½ cups canned tomato sauce

• Water as needed

• 1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce

• 3 heaping tablespoons chile powder

• 1 teaspoon oregano

• 1 teaspoon cumin seed or powder

• 2 onions, chopped

• 6 or more cloves garlic, chopped

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 teaspoon cayenne

• 1 tablespoon paprika

• 12 or more whole dried Japanese chiles (very hot)

• 6 to 8 chilipiquins (very, very hot)

• 3 tablespoons flour for thickener

Instructions

Sear the meat in a large skillet until gray in color. Transfer the meat to a chili pot, along with the tomato sauce and enough water to cover the meat about ½ inch, mixing well. Stir in the Tabasco, chili powder, oregano, cumin, onions, garlic, salt, cayenne, and paprika. Add the Japanese chiles and chilipiquins, taking care not to break them open. Let simmer for 1 hour and 45 minutes, stirring gently at intervals.

About 30 minutes before the end of the cooking time, skim off any grease that has risen to the top. Mix the flour with a little water to make it liquid without lumps. Add this paste to ingredients in the pot and blend in thoroughly. Adjust salt and seasonings. Unless you are chili hungry at the moment, let the chili remain in the pot overnight, then reheat and serve. Freeze any chili left over. Serve with sliced or chopped onions and pinto beans on the side.

Joe, the author of probably the best book ever written about chili, included his own recipe in With or Without Beans. “That which is to follow,” he wrote, “represents many tedious, but gladdening, hours in the kitchen, not to mention countless pots of chili.” Joe then presented three pages of description of his chili before revealing the recipe. He modestly stated that it should not be construed as the “best ever” chili, but rather one that satisfied the Coopers’ appetites. “This recipe,” concluded Cooper, “like most all worthwhile others, was conceived out of an uncertain past; born of a belief that no man can live long and prosper without good chili; reared in the confusion of trial and error; and now exists in maturity with the respect of neighbors and friends.”

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil

• 3 pounds lean beef (never veal), hand-chopped into bite-sized cubes

• 1 quart water

• 2 bay leaves (if desired)

• 8 dry [New Mexican] chile pods or 6 tablespoons chile powder

• 3 teaspoons salt

• 10 cloves garlic, finely chopped

• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

• 1 teaspoon oregano

• 1 teaspoon red pepper [hot Chile powder]

• ½ teaspoon black pepper

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• 3 tablespoons paprika

• 1/4 teaspoon cocoa (optional)

• 3 tablespoons flour

• 6 tablespoons corn meal

Instructions

When the olive oil is hot, in a 6-quart pot, add meat and sear over high heat; stir constantly until gray–not brown. It then will have the consistency of whole-grain hominy. Add 1 quart water and cook (covered) at bubbling simmer 1½ to 2 hours.

Then add all ingredients, except thickening (flour and corn meal). Cook 30 minutes longer at same bubbling simmer. Further cooking will damage some of the spice flavors. Skim off the fat.

Now add thickening, previously mixed in some cold water. Cook 5 minutes to determine if more water is necessary (likely) for your desired consistency. Stir to prevent sticking after thickening is added. A fairly hot chili.

In 1989, Sheldon P. Wimpfen, of Luray, Virginia, wrote that he had been a chili cook for fifty-five of his seventy-five years and that fact makes him an expert on the subject. He lambasted us for our “mistaken tales” about the origin of chili con carne. He enclosed as his evidence the first recipe ever used for chili con carne, dating from approximately 15,000 B.C. The ancient recipe which follows was invented by the Alaxsxaq Indians of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes on the Bering Land Bridge. He apologized in advance for any insult to whale lovers and wrote, “that’s just the way they cook up there.”

Ingredients

• 3 tons red chile pods

• 1 medium (50-foot) blue whale, cubed to fingertip size using razor-sharp ulus (a native knife)

• 60 oogruk (seals), cubed to fingertip size using razor-sharp ulus

• 30 tons onions, chopped fine using razor-sharp ulus

• 1 ton garlic, minced using razorsharp ulus

• 100 pounds sea salt

• 600 pounds oregano

• 400 pounds cumin

Instructions

Dig a bowl in the ice 40 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 10 feet deep. Place all ingredients in the ice bowl and mix well with dull ulus. Add water and fumarole-heated stones until the ice bowl is bubbling. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 weeks. Ladle leftovers into 5-gallon leather buckets and freeze in a glacier.