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Pepper Cocktail

A chilled pepper cocktail with tomato filling, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, lemon juice, celery seed, served over cracked ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pepper Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the stem end of the peppers and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the peppers in ice water until crisp.

  3. Skin the tomatoes and dice them.

  4. In a bowl, combine the diced tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, lemon juice, and celery seed.

Serve

  1. At serving time, place the peppers in small saucers filled with cracked ice.

  2. Fill each pepper half with the tomato mixture, replace the top, and serve.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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
Their crisp, hollow shells hold the filling and give the cocktail its crunch.
Tomatoes
They supply the bulk, moisture and tangy body of the savory filling.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory depth and a sharp, fermented note to the tomato mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the tomatoes and balances the savory flavours.

The step that matters

Soak the peppers in ice water until crisp. Cold water firms the cell walls of the pepper, so it stays crisp rather than limp once filled. Soaking long enough matters for a crunchy texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, tomato, sauce, celery):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, tomato, sauce, celery. 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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