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Baked Stuffed Peppers

A baked dish of bell peppers filled with rice, ham, butter, and crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Remove the tops and scrape the insides of the peppers.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill each pepper three-quarters full with the rice and ham mixture.

  2. Moisten the filling with butter just before baking.

  3. Add a lump of butter on top of each pepper.

  4. Sprinkle each pepper with cracker crumbs, pepper, and salt.

  5. Bake until heated through.

  6. Serve hot.

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 + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  2. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  3. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  4. Rice + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bell peppers
Act as the edible shell that holds the filling and softens as it bakes.
Cold boiled rice
Provides the bulk of the filling and absorbs butter and juices as it heats.
Boiled ham
Adds savoury flavour and meaty texture to the rice filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and promotes gentle browning on top.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping that adds texture over the filling.

The step that matters

Fill each pepper three-quarters full. Leaving room at the top lets the filling heat through evenly and gives space for the rice to expand slightly without spilling over during baking.

“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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