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Stuffed Peppers

A sweet stuffed pepper dish filled with boiled cabbage and simmered in a vinegar-sugar pickle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and cabbage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Core the peppers and sprinkle them with coarse sea salt.

  2. Pour boiling water over the peppers and let them stand overnight.

Make the stuffing

  1. Chop the cabbage and boil it in salted water until tender.

  2. Squeeze out the juice, then stuff the cabbage into the peppers.

Pickle and seal

  1. Combine vinegar, water, sugar, and pickle spices in a pot and bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Add the stuffed peppers to the boiling sauce and cook them for a few minutes.

  3. Place the peppers in a jar and seal the jar tightly.

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 + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers
Form the edible shell that holds the stuffing and softens in the pickling liquid.
White cabbage
Provides the filling that fills the peppers and adds bulk and texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickled peppers.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cabbage, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, vinegar, sugar. 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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