Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Peppers

A savory dish of bell peppers filled with seasoned veal and topped with a tomato-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

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 the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the ground veal, dry mustard, salt, nutmeg, bread crumbs, and chopped onion.

  2. In a saucepan, bring the vinegar to a boil, then add the beaten egg yolk, sugar, butter, salt, and pepper. Stir until thickened.

  3. Add the rich cream to the meat mixture and stir well.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the soaked peppers with the meat mixture.

  2. Bake the stuffed peppers in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, stew the tomatoes, strain, and return to the stove.

  2. Add salt, pepper, sugar, nutmeg, onion juice, butter, olive oil, cloves, and mace to the tomatoes.

  3. When the sauce boils, add chopped pecans if desired, and pour it hot over the stuffed peppers.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground veal
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the stuffing its meaty body.
Ground bread crumbs
Absorbs moisture and binds the meat so the filling holds its shape.
Egg yolk
Thickens the vinegar mixture and helps bind the filling as it sets.
Rich cream
Adds moisture and richness to the meat mixture, keeping the filling tender.
Bell peppers
Serve as the edible shell that holds the filling during baking.
Tomatoes
Form the base of the sauce, adding acidity and body.

The step that matters

Thickening the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolk thickens only gently with heat. Add it to the hot vinegar slowly while stirring, and keep the heat moderate, so it sets smoothly instead of scrambling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mustard, nutmeg, bread, vinegar, egg, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mustard, nutmeg, bread, vinegar, egg, 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.

More stuffed peppers recipes

Oyster 12Sweetbread 5Mexican 4Baked 3Pickled 3 See all 64 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes