Name: Pepper Lilies
Ingredients: sweet peppers; cottage cheese; ¼ cup cream; cooked rice; yolks of hard boiled eggs; bleached lettuce hearts

Why it works: Rice and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 520 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pepper Lilies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

Cut sweet peppers into petal-shaped points, leaving them joined at the stem end.
Remove the pulp and seeds from the peppers.

Make the filling

Mix finely minced tips of peppers, cottage cheese, cream, rice, and yolks in a bowl.
Form the mixture into a ball.

Assemble and serve

Gently press the pepper petals against the side of the cheese ball.
Serve the cheese ball on bleached lettuce hearts.

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.

Rice + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together520 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Cottage cheese + ricetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together145 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Cottage cheese + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together601 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese: Forms the creamy body of the cheese ball and holds its shape.
Cream: Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling soft and smooth.
Cooked rice: Adds bulk and a light texture to the filling.
Yolks of hard boiled eggs: Add richness and a firm, crumbly body to the filling.
Sweet peppers: Provide crisp texture and mild sweetness, and form the petal garnish.

Swap the lettuce

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

Spinachfits better
Asparagusfits better
Capsicumfits better
Lettucethe original

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