Name: Stuffed Peppers
Ingredients: 8 peppers; 1 pint finely chopped meat; ½ pint grated bread; ½ pint water or stock; 2 teaspoons salt; ⅓ teaspoon savory; ⅓ teaspoon thyme; ⅓ teaspoon sage; 3 tablespoons butter

Why it works: Thyme and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Cover the peppers with boiling water and simmer for 15 minutes.

Stuff and bake

Mix the meat, grated bread, water or stock, salt, savory, thyme, sage, and butter to create the stuffing.
Fill the peppers with the stuffing.
Bake the stuffed peppers at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

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.

Thyme + sagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,485 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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 stuffing and softens when simmered and baked.
Meat: Provides the main body and savory richness of the filling.
Grated bread: Absorbs liquid and gives the stuffing a soft, binding texture.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender filling.

Swap the sage

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

Marjoramfits about as well
Parsleyfits about as well
Sagethe original
Rosemaryfits less well

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