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Stuffed Peppers

A savory dish of parboiled peppers filled with a sautéed mixture of onion, mushrooms, ham, chicken, and bread crumbs, baked with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Stuffed Peppers

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Cook the onion with butter in a skillet over medium heat for 5 minutes without browning.

  2. Add the mushrooms, ham, and chicken; cook for 1 minute.

  3. Moisten the mixture with brown sauce, then add bread crumbs, cayenne, salt, and black pepper.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the peppers with the cooked mixture, cover with buttered bread crumbs.

  2. Bake in buttered gem cups at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on rings of toast with additional brown sauce.

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. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bell peppers
Parboiled shells that hold the filling and soften during baking.
Brown sauce
Moistens the filling and adds savoury, rich flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid in the filling and form a golden, crisp topping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the topping brown.
Chicken
Provides savoury protein that firms up the filling as it cooks.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the onion without browning. Onion cooked gently over medium heat softens and sweetens evenly. Browning it too early can turn it bitter and darken the filling's flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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