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Stuffed Peppers

Stuffed peppers with crab, butter, eggs, crackers, and spices, baked and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until very light.

  3. Mix in the crab meat, crushed crackers, chili pepper, cayenne, Worcestershire sauce, and shredded sweet peppers.

Fill and bake

  1. Cut the bottoms off the bell peppers, remove seeds, and wash them.

  2. Fill each pepper with the stuffing and replace the tops.

  3. Stand the peppers in a shallow roasting pan and place a small piece of butter on each.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes, basting frequently with stock gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve on a platter, pouring a spoonful of gravy over each pepper and garnishing with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Crab + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and melts over the peppers while baking.
Eggs
Beaten in to lighten the stuffing and help bind it as it sets.
Crab meat
Forms the main body of the stuffing and contributes its savory flavor.
Soda crackers
Crushed crackers absorb moisture and help hold the stuffing together.
Bell peppers
Hollow shells that hold the stuffing and soften as they bake.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs in one at a time. Adding eggs gradually and beating until very light lets each one emulsify into the butter, creating an airy base that keeps the stuffing from turning dense or greasy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

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