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Green Peppers and Chicken

A dish of finely chopped green peppers and cold chicken cooked with butter, flour, and broth, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Green Peppers and Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Boil the green peppers for 10 minutes.

  2. Cut off the tops, remove the seeds, and chop the peppers very fine.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped peppers with the cold chicken, butter, flour, and chicken broth, then mix well and add salt to taste.

  2. Cook the mixture until very hot.

Serve

  1. Serve on toast.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Pepper + chickentop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the chicken broth and butter into a binding sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and softens the filling.
Chicken broth
Supplies liquid and savory flavor that moistens the mixture.
Green peppers
Add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor and some texture.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until very hot. Flour needs heat to hydrate and swell fully, so the filling thickens and loses any raw floury taste. Heating until very hot also ensures the cold chicken is thoroughly warmed through.

“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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