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Salad

Pepper and Cream Cheese Salad

A salad of peppers stuffed with cream cheese, served on lettuce with dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pepper and Cream Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Cut off the small end of the peppers and remove the seeds. Wipe out the inside of the peppers.

Fill and chill

  1. Fill the peppers with cream cheese or cottage cheese, pressing down firmly to pack it into the flutings.

  2. Set the filled peppers on ice.

Serve

  1. Serve whole or cut into thick slices on a bed of crisp lettuce with dressing.

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 + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  2. Cream cheese + lettucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + cream cheesetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,195 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese or cottage cheese
Fills the peppers and provides a mild, creamy filling that contrasts with the crisp pepper.
Crisp lettuce
Provides a crisp, fresh bed that holds the sliced peppers.

The step that matters

Pressing the filling firmly into the flutings. Packing the cheese firmly into the pepper's ridges removes air gaps, so the filling holds its shape when the pepper is sliced and does not fall out when served.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cream cheese):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cream cheese. 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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