Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Peppers

A dish of bell peppers filled with a mixture of cabbage, onions, sugar, mustard seeds, horseradish, oil, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the peppers

  1. Remove the tops of the peppers and take out the seeds.

  2. Replace the tops and soak the peppers in salt water overnight.

Fill and pickle

  1. In a bowl, combine the cabbage, onions, sugar, white mustard seed, black mustard seed, horseradish, salad oil, turmeric, ground cloves, allspice, and mace.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the peppers and tie the tops on.

  3. Place the stuffed peppers in jars and cover with 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.

  1. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

Cabbage
Provides the bulk and crisp texture of the filling.
Onions
Adds savoury flavour and moisture to the filling.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
White mustard seed
Contributes pungent heat and a sharp, mustardy bite.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows during pickling.
Vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid that preserves the peppers and adds acidity.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cabbage, sugar, mustard, horseradish, turmeric, clove):

  1. Cauliflowerfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, sugar, mustard, horseradish, turmeric, clove. 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.

More stuffed bell peppers recipes

Brazilian 3 See all 65 →

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes