Name: Stuffed Peppers
Ingredients: large mild peppers; coarse sea salt; water; chicken; butter; parsley; onion; sweet herbs; grated bread

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the peppers in salt and water for a few days, changing the water frequently.
Cut out the vein that makes the peppers hot.
Prepare the force meat by mixing chopped chicken with salt, butter, parsley, and onion.
Add sweet herbs and grated bread to the mixture.
Stuff the peppers with the force meat.
Fry the stuffed peppers in butter.
Serve with a rich gravy or demi-glace 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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Carrotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, chicken, butter, parsley, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.