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Stuffed Sweet Peppers

A baked dish of sweet peppers filled with a mixture of cooked meat, onion, mushrooms, butter, parsley, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Sweet Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cut the peppers in half, remove the seeds, and cut off the stem, or leave them whole with a cap removed.

  3. Chop the meat, onion, and mushrooms finely.

  4. Mix the meat, onion, mushrooms, butter, parsley, and salt together.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the peppers with the mixture and place them in a baking pan.

  2. Pour hot stock or water around the peppers and baste often.

  3. Bake for 45 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet peppers
Their walls hold the filling and soften as they bake, becoming tender to eat.
Cooked meat
Forms the savoury body of the filling and adds richness and flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the filling so it holds its shape when cooked.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy savour to the filling as they cook.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the filling once softened.

The step that matters

Pour hot stock or water around the peppers and baste often. Liquid in the pan turns to steam and keeps the peppers and filling moist in the oven. Basting replaces moisture lost to evaporation, so the filling does not dry out or the pepper walls char before they become tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, meat, butter, parsley, mushroom, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, meat, butter, parsley, mushroom, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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