Skip to main content
Main

Green Peppers Au Gratin

A baked dish of green peppers stuffed with rice, minced chicken, and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Green Peppers Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Cut the stem end from the peppers.

  2. Remove the seeds with a penknife and small spoon.

  3. Soak the peppers in cold water for 30 minutes.

Fill and sauce

  1. Mix the rice, minced chicken, salt, butter, and enough tomato juice to moisten.

  2. Fill the peppers with the mixture, heaping it up.

  3. Stand the filled peppers upright in a deep dish.

  4. Fill the gaps with the remaining mixture.

  5. Pour tomato sauce thickened with drawn butter into the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Sift fine bread crumbs over the top.

  2. Dot the crumbs with butter.

  3. Cover the dish and bake for 1 hour.

  4. Uncover to brown.

  5. Serve in the baking dish.

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. Rice + chickentop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers
Hollowed shells that hold the filling and soften as they bake.
Cold boiled rice
Bulks out the filling and absorbs moisture so it stays tender rather than wet.
Cold minced chicken
Provides the savoury protein that forms the body of the filling.
Tomato juice
Moistens the filling so the rice and chicken hold together.
Tomato sauce
Forms a moist, tangy sauce in the dish that surrounds the peppers as they cook.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns when the dish is uncovered.

The step that matters

Uncover to brown. The dish is covered for most of baking, which traps steam and keeps the peppers and crumbs pale and soft. Uncovering lets moisture escape and surface sugars and starches brown, so the topping needs watching at the end.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, rice, chicken, butter, sauce, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Potatofits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, rice, chicken, butter, sauce, bread. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes