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Stuffed Peppers

A baked dish of green peppers filled with a mixture of tomatoes, ham, chicken, breadcrumbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

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

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped tomatoes (or tomato pulp), ham, chicken, bread crumbs, onion, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Heat the mixture in olive oil.

  3. Fill the peppers with the heated mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the stuffed peppers closely together in a baking pan.

  2. Pour boiling water into the pan.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes.

  4. Serve with tomato sauce.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers
Hollow shells that hold the filling and soften as they bake.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity to the filling and body to the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and help bind the filling so it holds its shape.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the filling.
Chicken
Adds protein-rich body and savory flavor to the filling.
Olive oil
Carries fat into the filling, adding richness and helping it brown lightly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, tomato, ham, chicken, bread, sauce, olive):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, tomato, ham, chicken, bread, sauce, olive. 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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