Purists say tomatoes, like beans, turn chili into something else. The rulebooks allow them, and the Texan who defended Texas chili in 1967 used tomato sauce himself.
Tomatoes are the quieter cousin of the bean fight. National Geographic notes that traditional purists reject tomatoes as firmly as beans, and the Christian Science Monitor reported the same objection in 1986.
The 1967 contest complicates things. Sports Illustrated listed fresh tomato among the suspect ingredients of Smith's school of chili. Yet Wick Fowler, Texas's champion, sold a chili mix whose instructions called for an eight-ounce can of tomato sauce, and his recipe as printed by John Raven uses a cup and a half. Smith's recipe used tomato paste. Both men put tomato in the pot.
The competition rules are relaxed about it. CASI's rulebook permits onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic as long as the pieces are of consistent size and spread evenly through the judging cup. The ICS defines Traditional Red as meat cooked with red chili peppers, spices and other ingredients, and bans only beans and non-vegetable fillers such as rice and pasta.
Outside the cook-off world tomatoes are ordinary. National Geographic says they were a common chili ingredient by the 1940s. Cincinnati chili starts from pureed tomatoes. A Texan cook quoted in 1986 said he liked tomatoes in his chili in any form: whole, paste or sauce.