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Baked Peppers

A baked dish of green peppers stuffed with a mixture of cooked meat, rice, tomato, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Peppers

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut off the stem end of the peppers and remove the seeds and thick partitions.

  2. Soak the peppers in salted water for 12 hours or briefly boil them until heated, then drain.

Stuff and bake

  1. Mix the chopped meat, diced tomato, salt, melted butter, and rice together.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the peppers and place them in a baking pan.

  3. Add the onion slice, 1 tablespoon of butter, the tomato juice, and enough water to reach half the height of the peppers.

  4. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour, basting every 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Transfer the peppers to a serving dish, thicken the pan juices, pour over the peppers, and serve.

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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs liquid and cooks into the filling, giving it body and bulk.
Cooked meat
Adds savory flavour and richness to the rice filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the filling and pan juices taste rounded.
Tomato
Adds acidity and moisture to the filling and the pan juices.
Green peppers
Hold the filling as edible shells that soften as they bake.

The step that matters

Soaking or boiling the peppers before stuffing. Raw peppers stay firm and can taste bitter, so softening them first helps them become tender during baking and keeps the filling from cooking unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, meat, tomato, butter, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, meat, tomato, butter, rice. 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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