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Stuffed Green Peppers

A dish of green peppers filled with rice, onions, egg, and baked with stewed tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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. Wash and clean the peppers, removing the seeds and cutting off the tops with the stems.

  2. Steam the peppers until tender, then let them cool.

Make the filling

  1. Fry the diced onions until soft, then mix with the cooked rice, egg, and salt.

  2. Stuff the peppers with the rice mixture and replace the tops.

Bake

  1. Place the stuffed peppers in a baking dish and pour the stewed tomatoes over them.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  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. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  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

Green peppers
Hold the filling and soften as they cook, becoming tender vessels for the stuffing.
Cooked rice
Bulks out the filling and absorbs moisture, giving it a soft, substantial texture.
Egg
Binds the rice and onion mixture so the filling holds together when served.
Diced onions
Add savoury flavour and moisture to the filling once softened by frying.
Stewed tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity, forming a sauce that bakes around the peppers.

The step that matters

Steam the peppers until tender, then let them cool. Peppers that are undercooked stay firm and may not soften fully in the oven, while overcooked peppers tear or collapse when stuffed. Cooling makes them easier to handle without losing their shape.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, rice, egg, tomato. 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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