Name: Stuffed Peppers
Ingredients: large bell peppers; 2 quarts chopped cabbage; 1 cup white mustard seed; 3 tablespoons celery seed; 2 tablespoons coarse sea salt; ½ cup grated horseradish; small onions; cucumber; cold vinegar

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut around the stem of each bell pepper and remove it along with all the seeds.
In a bowl, mix chopped cabbage, white mustard seed, celery seed, coarse sea salt, and grated horseradish.

Stuff and pack

Fill each pepper with the stuffing mixture.
Add a small onion and a little cucumber into each pepper.
Tie the stem back on each pepper.
Place the peppers in a jar and cover them with cold 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.

Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Horseradish + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together640 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together481 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 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

Bell peppers: Hollow shells that hold the stuffing and give a crisp, pickled bite.
Cabbage: Forms the bulk of the filling and stays crisp through the pickling.
Cold vinegar: Acidity that preserves the peppers and gives the pickled sharpness.
Grated horseradish: Adds pungent heat that mellows as the peppers sit.

Swap the onion

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

Lettucefits better
Radishfits better
Broccolifits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, mustard, celery, horseradish, cucumber, 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.