Skip to main content
Main

Green Peppers Stuffed and Baked

A baked dish of sweet peppers filled with a bread and herb mixture, topped with a savory sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,294 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Green Peppers Stuffed and Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Soak stale bread in cold water until it expands to 1 pint when pressed.

  2. Season the soaked bread with coarse sea salt, fine herbs, sweet basil, summer savory, and butter or savory drippings.

  3. Cut off the stem end of each pepper and remove all seeds and interior.

  4. Fill each pepper with the seasoned bread mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the savory drippings, then add flour and stir until smooth and brown.

  2. Gradually add meat stock or water, season with coarse sea salt, and cook for 5 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sauce around the stuffed peppers in a baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour, basting often with the 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. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Basil + summer savorytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet peppers
Hold the filling and soften into tender shells as they bake.
Stale bread
Absorbs liquid and fat to form a moist, soft filling that holds its shape.
Butter or savory drippings
Adds fat and richness to the filling and carries the herb flavour.
Flour
Thickens the drippings into a smooth sauce as it cooks and browns.
Meat stock or water
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that keeps the peppers moist while baking.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the drippings. Cooking flour in fat until smooth and brown builds flavour and prevents lumps, so the sauce thickens evenly when the liquid is added gradually.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, bread, summer savory, butter, sauce, flour, meat):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, summer savory, butter, sauce, flour, meat. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipes