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Stuffed Peppers

A baked dish of peppers filled with a mixture of onion, parsley, butter, cold meat, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Melt the butter in a pan.

  3. Mix the onion, parsley, chopped cold meat, salt, and cayenne together.

  4. Parboil the peppers in boiling water for about 5 minutes.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the peppers with the meat mixture and place them in a baking pan.

  2. Pour a few tablespoons of stock, gravy, or hot water over the stuffed peppers.

  3. Bake until the peppers are tender but not broken.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Peppers
Form the edible shell that holds the filling and softens during baking.
Cold meat
Provides the savoury filling that is bound into the stuffing mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the onion and herb mixture.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Parboil the peppers. Parboiling softens the pepper walls partway so they become tender in the oven without breaking. Boiling too long makes them collapse when stuffed, while too short leaves them tough and raw-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, meat, pepper. 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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