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Stuffed Sweet Peppers

Stuffed Sweet Peppers are sweet peppers filled with a mixture of onion, butter, brown sauce, egg, ham, and buttered crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stuffed Sweet Peppers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Remove a slice from the stem end of each pepper.

  2. With a sharp knife, take out the seeds and white veins, then drop the peppers in hot water and simmer for ten minutes.

  3. Plunge the peppers in cold water to harden.

Make the filling

  1. Cook the onion in butter for a few minutes.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients, mix well, and cool.

  3. Sprinkle the inside of each pepper lightly with salt.

Bake and serve

  1. Stuff the peppers with the mixture and bake in an earthen dish until lightly browned.

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

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  5. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Sweet peppers
Their flesh becomes tender when simmered, forming the edible shell that holds the filling.
Brown sauce
Adds moisture and savory flavor that keeps the filling from drying out in the oven.
Buttered crumbs
Form a golden, lightly browned topping and add a crisp texture.
Hard boiled egg
Binds the filling and adds a soft, rich texture.
Cooked ham
Contributes salty, meaty flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Simmering the peppers. Simmering softens the pepper walls enough to be tender after baking, but over-cooking makes them collapse and lose their shape when stuffed. Plunging them in cold water afterward firms them up for handling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, sauce, egg, ham):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, sauce, egg, ham. 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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