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Stuffed Green Peppers

A dish of green peppers filled with bread crumbs, minced meat, celery, onion, butter, salt, pepper, and water, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Green Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the peppers

  1. Cut the tops off the green peppers and remove the insides.

  2. Soak the peppers in salted water for a few hours.

  3. Drain the peppers.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the peppers with a mixture of bread crumbs, minced meat, chopped celery, and chopped onion.

  2. Moisten the mixture with water.

  3. Season the mixture with butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers
Serve as the hollow shell that holds the filling while it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the filling so it holds its shape.
Cold cooked meat
Provides savory bulk and protein-rich body to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more flavorful filling.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with water. Bread crumbs need enough liquid to soften and bind with the meat and vegetables; too little leaves a dry, crumbly filling, while too much makes it soggy and loose.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, meat, onion, 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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