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Canned Red Peppers

A preserved condiment made by canning red peppers with vinegar and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Canned Red Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Open the peppers and remove the seeds.

  2. Blanch the peppers in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, then plunge them into cold water.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack the peppers in sterilized jars.

  2. Boil vinegar and sugar together for 5 minutes to make a syrup.

  3. Pour the boiling hot syrup over the peppers in the jars, filling them completely.

  4. Seal the jars immediately and store in a cool, dark place.

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 + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Red peppers
Form the main body of the preserve, softening slightly during blanching and holding their texture in the jar.
Vinegar
Acidifies the syrup, giving the preserve its tang and helping keep it stable in the jar.
Sugar
Dissolves into the vinegar to form the syrup, balancing the sharpness with sweetness.

The step that matters

Filling the jars with boiling syrup. Pouring boiling hot syrup over the peppers and filling jars completely drives out air and heats the contents, which helps the seal form and limits spoilage during storage.

“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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