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Stuffed Green Peppers

A baked dish of green peppers filled with a beef or pork, breadcrumb, tomato, and onion mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Scrape out the seeds from the green peppers.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped beef or pork, breadcrumbs, tomatoes, and finely chopped onion, then season the mixture with salt and pepper to taste.

Stuff and bake

  1. Place a small marble-sized piece of butter in each pepper shell.

  2. Stuff each pepper with the dressing mixture.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until the peppers are tender and browned.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Green peppers
Form the edible shell that holds the filling and softens as it bakes.
Beef or pork
Supplies the meat base, adding richness and savoury flavour as it cooks.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb juices from the meat and tomatoes, helping the filling hold together.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that keep the filling juicy and balance the richness.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth of flavour to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the peppers and helps them brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until the peppers are tender. Raw green pepper walls are firm and bitter. Heat breaks down their cell walls, so the shell softens and the flavour mellows. Pulling them early leaves the peppers tough and the meat undercooked.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, beef, onion, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, beef, onion, butter. 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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