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Stuffed Green Peppers

A baked dish of sweet peppers filled with a tomato, onion, and rice mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Stuffed Green 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 the filling

  1. Remove seeds from the peppers and parboil them in cold water for a few minutes.

  2. In a pot, cook the tomatoes, onion, and seasonings (butter, salt, pepper, and sugar) for about 30 minutes.

  3. Add the cooked rice to the tomato mixture and stir well.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the peppers with the rice mixture and place them in a buttered baking dish.

  2. Add a small amount of water to the dish to prevent burning.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 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. 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. Onion + ricetop 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

Sweet peppers
Their walls hold the filling and soften as they bake, becoming tender around the rice.
Tomatoes
Cooked down into a moist, acidic sauce that flavours the rice and keeps the filling from drying out.
Onion
Softens as it cooks, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the tomato base.
Boiled rice
Forms the bulk of the filling, absorbing the tomato juices and giving the dish body.

The step that matters

Adding water to the baking dish. A little water in the dish creates steam and keeps the pan from scorching, so the peppers cook through gently instead of burning on the bottom.

Swap the onion

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

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

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