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Stuffed Peppers

Sweet peppers stuffed with cold chicken or veal, bread crumbs, onion juice, salt, pepper, and butter, baked and served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Peppers

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the peppers

  1. Cut a slice from the stem end of the peppers and remove the seeds.

  2. Parboil the peppers for 15 minutes.

Fill and bake

  1. Mix equal parts of cold chicken or veal with softened bread crumbs, and season with onion juice, salt, and pepper.

  2. Fill the peppers with the mixture and cover with buttered bread crumbs.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.

  4. Serve on toast with brown gravy.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  4. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet peppers
Serve as the edible shell that holds the filling during baking.
Cold chicken or veal
Provides the meaty bulk of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Soften and bind the meat so the filling holds together, and add body.
Butter
Coats the crumb topping, adding richness and encouraging browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Parboil the peppers for 15 minutes. Parboiling softens the pepper walls so they cook through in the short bake. Under-parboiling leaves them tough and raw-tasting, while over-parboiling makes them collapse and lose their shape when filled.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, chicken, bread, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, chicken, bread, butter. 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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