The use of beef as the primary meat originated with Spanish colonizers.[1] In Spanish, the term "chile con carne", consisting of the word chile (from the Nahuatl chīlli) and carne, Spanish for 'meat', is first recorded in a book from 1857 about the Mexican-American War.[1] A recipe dating back to the 1850s describes dried beef, suet, dried chili peppers and salt, which were pounded together, formed into bricks and left to dry, which could then be boiled in pots in an army encampment in Monterrey, of what is now Nuevo León, Mexico.[1][3]