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Preserve

Stuffed Peppers

A preserved dish of green peppers soaked in salt water and stuffed with salted, seasoned cabbage, then covered with hot vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stuffed Peppers

6 large green peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Soak the peppers in salt water for a few days.

  2. Remove the seeds from the peppers.

Make the cabbage filling

  1. Chop the cabbage.

  2. Sprinkle the cabbage with coarse sea salt.

  3. After a few hours, drain the cabbage.

  4. Season the cabbage with mustard or celery seed.

Stuff and pickle

  1. Fill the peppers with the seasoned cabbage.

  2. Sew the peppers closed.

  3. Cover the peppers with hot vinegar.

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. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers
Form the pickled shell that holds the cabbage filling and gives the dish its crisp-tender bite.
Cabbage
Forms the filling, and salting it draws out water so it stays crisp rather than soggy.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage and helps preserve it during the long soak.
Hot vinegar
Acidifies the peppers and cabbage, preserving them and giving the pickled sourness.

The step that matters

Draining the salted cabbage. Salt pulls water out of the cabbage through osmosis. If the cabbage is not drained well after a few hours, the excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and makes the filling soft and watery inside the peppers.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits about as well
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, vinegar. 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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