A Little Book of Spices, War, and Chili
- michel1492
- 15 hours ago
- 7 min read
Rediscovering Helmut Ripperger’s Spice Cookery, 1942
Every now and then, I pull a cookbook from my shelves and discover that it isn't quite the book I thought it was.
Spice Cookery by Helmut Ripperger is one of those books.
My copy is a first edition, published in New York in 1942 by George W. Stewart, Publisher, Inc. I originally picked it up expecting a history of spices, perhaps something that would tell me where particular spices came from, how they traveled, and how cooks used them.
It starts that way.
And then it becomes something altogether different.
Ripperger gives us bits of history and literature, recipes ranging from cinnamon toast to court bouillon, instructions for making a pomander, hippocras, pea soup, Turkish rice, and, on page 78, chili con carne.
It is quirky. It is occasionally frustrating.
And I've become rather fond of it.
A Spice Shelf in 1942
The most interesting historical material appears right at the beginning.
Ripperger describes looking at his spice shelf and seeing bottles labeled Saigon cinnamon, Tellicherry black pepper, Amboyna cloves, Jamaica ginger, Banda mace, and Sarawak white pepper.
Meanwhile, the radio in the next room announces the fall of Singapore.
That detail places the book firmly in its historical moment. Singapore fell to Japanese forces on February 15, 1942, during a war that was transforming trade and transportation throughout Southeast Asia. Ripperger begins wondering what would happen if shipments from the Spice Islands were delayed or stopped. He discusses attempts to grow spices and herbs elsewhere in the Americas as alternatives to traditional overseas sources.
We should be careful here. I would not use Ripperger alone as proof for every claim he makes about the ancient spice trade or wartime agriculture.
But for something else, he's an excellent source:
He tells us what an American food writer was thinking about his spice cupboard in 1942.
War had made geography visible.
Cinnamon, pepper, cloves, mace and ginger were no longer simply ingredients in little bottles. They came from actual places, and events occurring thousands of miles away could determine whether those bottles could be replenished.
For someone who spends a great deal of time thinking about how spices move through history, I found that fascinating.
Then Things Get a Little Strange
After that opening, I expected a systematic history of spices.
I didn't get one.
Instead, Ripperger wanders delightfully through recipes, quotations, poetry, biblical passages and bits of culinary history.
There's cinnamon toast. Mustard sauce. Turkish rice. Court bouillon. Pea soup. A recipe for hippocras. Even instructions for making a clove-studded orange pomander.
It doesn't behave much like a reference book.
It feels more like someone's personal collection of interesting things connected, however loosely, by spices.
And perhaps there is something personal about it.
Before the book even begins, Ripperger included a dedication:
FOR M. C. S.WHOIS THE SPICEOF LIFE
I haven't been able to establish who M.C.S. was, and I'm not going to invent an identity for those initials.
But I love that the dedication is there.
And Then There Is the Julia Child Connection
Ripperger himself turned out to be more interesting than I expected.
A decade after Spice Cookery, his career intersected with the story that would eventually lead to one of the most influential American cookbooks of the twentieth century.
Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle were already working on the idea of presenting French cooking to American cooks. Their early efforts eventually produced the small 1952 publication What's Cooking in France? Harvard's archive of Simone Beck's papers confirms the publication of that brief work before Beck, Bertholle and Julia Child went on to write Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published in 1961.
Ripperger was involved in adapting and editing material from that earlier Beck-Bertholle project for American readers.
So I wouldn't describe him as Julia Child's collaborator.
That's too strong.
But he occupies a fascinating little place in the story just upstream from the collaboration that became Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Suddenly my peculiar little spice cookbook had become considerably more interesting.
And then I reached page 78.
Chili Con Carne, 1942
Ripperger's recipe immediately caught my attention.
His chili contains beef and pork, onion, garlic, tomatoes, oregano, salt and an enormous-sounding six tablespoons of chili powder.
He cooks the chili for several hours and then does something else worth noticing:
The kidney beans don't go into the chili.
He serves them on the side, along with boiled rice.
Commercial chili powder was certainly established by the time Ripperger was writing. William Gebhardt had begun commercially producing his chili powder in Texas in the 1890s, and his company was selling it widely well before 1942.
Chili itself had also traveled far beyond the communities from which it emerged. The National Park Service's history of Latino food in the United States traces chili con carne to its Mexican and Mexican American roots and describes how commercial chili powders, canned chili and regional adaptations transformed the dish as it spread across the country.
Ripperger's recipe shouldn't therefore be presented as the historical chili con carne.
It is something much more specific: Helmut Ripperger's chili con carne, published in an American cookbook in 1942.
And that makes it perfect for our kitchen.
The Original 1942 Recipe
Here is Ripperger's recipe as printed in my copy of Spice Cookery:
CHILI CON CARNE Brown one chopped onion and two minced cloves of garlic in two tablespoons of lard or bacon drippings. Mix six tablespoons of chili powder with one tablespoon of flour and add to the fat. Take two pounds of beef and one pound of pork and either cut it into very small cubes or grind it and add. Over this rub one can of tomatoes through a sieve. Cover the pan and cook for half an hour. Add one tablespoon of salt and one tablespoon of oregano and simmer for two hours. This is served with a dish of red kidney beans on the side and one of boiled rice.
Helmut Ripperger, Spice Cookery (New York: George W. Stewart, Publisher, Inc., 1942), 78.
From His Spice Shelf to Mine
I don't want to “fix” Ripperger's recipe.
The original belongs exactly where it is: in 1942.
Instead, I wanted to see what would happen if I kept the basic character of his dish but approached the seasoning from my own spice shelf.
For that, I'm using Imperial Adobo from Oak City Spice Blends.
Imperial Adobo brings together black pepper, cayenne, coriander, cumin, garlic, onion and paprika. Rather than pretending it is equivalent to Ripperger's chili powder, I'm treating it as a different seasoning approach to the same basic pot of beef, pork and tomatoes.
And importantly, I'm not replacing his six tablespoons of chili powder with six tablespoons of Imperial Adobo.
After working through the balance, 2½ tablespoons is where I want this version.
1942 Chili Con Carne, Revisited with Imperial Adobo
Serves 8–10
Ingredients
1 large onion, chopped (200 g)
2 cloves garlic, minced (6 g)
2 tablespoons lard or bacon drippings (28 g)
2½ tablespoons Imperial Adobo (19 g)
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour (8 g)
2 pounds beef, cut into very small cubes or coarsely ground (907 g)
1 pound pork, cut into very small cubes or coarsely ground (454 g)
1 can (28 ounces) whole peeled or crushed tomatoes (794 g)
2 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste (about 6 g)
Cooked red kidney beans, for serving
Cooked rice, for serving
Method
Heat the lard or bacon drippings in a large, heavy pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until softened.
Add the garlic and cook briefly, just until fragrant.
Reduce the heat slightly. Stir in the Imperial Adobo and flour and cook for about 20 to 30 seconds, stirring continuously. This brief bloom allows the spices to become fragrant without scorching the garlic and onion in the blend.
Add the beef and pork. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the meat begins to brown.
Add the tomatoes and their juices. If using whole tomatoes, crush them as they go into the pot.
Cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes.
Add the salt. Reduce the heat to low and continue simmering for approximately 1½ to 2 hours, partially covered and stirring occasionally. If the chili becomes too thick before the meat is tender, add a small amount of water.
Taste and adjust the salt if necessary.
Serve as Ripperger did in 1942, with warm kidney beans and boiled rice on the side.
Two Spice Shelves, 84 Years Apart
That's really what I love about this little experiment.
Ripperger sat in 1942 looking at his spice shelf while listening to news from the other side of the world. Eighty-four years later, I pulled his book from my own shelf.
His recipe doesn't need to become ours for it to have value. And our version doesn't need to pretend to be historical. Instead, the two recipes can sit beside each other. One tells us something about an American kitchen in 1942.
The other tells us what happened when a spice blender in 2026 opened that old cookbook and wondered: What would I do with this today? Sometimes an old cookbook gives us a recipe worth preserving. Sometimes it gives us a question worth asking.
This little book gave me both.
Sources & Further Reading
The principal source for this article is my own first-edition copy of Helmut Ripperger, Spice Cookery (New York: George W. Stewart, Publisher, Inc., 1942), Oak City Spice Blends Research Library, Shelf
For the history of chili con carne and the commercialization of chili powder, the National Park Service's American Latino Theme Study: Food is particularly useful, while the Texas State Historical Association documents William Gebhardt's development and commercial marketing of chili powder beginning in the 1890s.
For Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and the development of the cookbook project that became Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the Schlesinger Library's description of the Simone Beck Papers and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History provide strong institutional documentation.
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