Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Green Peppers

A baked dish of green peppers filled with veal, onions, tomatoes, and breadcrumbs, topped with sliced tomatoes and baked in water.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Green Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the peppers

  1. Cut off the tops of the green peppers and remove the seeds, saving the seeds from one pepper.

  2. Soak the peppers in salt water for 1 hour.

Make the filling

  1. In a skillet, fry the onions in butter until browned.

  2. Let the onions cool, then mix them with the chopped veal, chopped tomatoes, coarse sea salt, saved pepper seeds, and bread crumbs.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the peppers with the mixture and secure the tops with toothpicks.

  2. Place the stuffed peppers in a baking pan.

  3. Top the stuffed peppers with sliced tomatoes and sprinkle with additional bread crumbs.

  4. Add 1½ pints of water to the pan.

  5. Cover the pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  6. Remove the cover to brown the tops.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meaty filling that holds its shape when baked.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth when fried until browned in butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while browning the onions.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and give the filling body and a light texture.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity to the filling and the sliced topping.

The step that matters

Cover the pan and bake, then uncover to brown the tops. Covering traps steam so the peppers and filling cook through and soften, while removing the cover lets dry heat brown the tops.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, veal, tomato, 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 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes