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Stuffed Peppers

A dish of bell peppers filled with sautéed onion, butter, bread crumbs, Worcestershire sauce, and an egg, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed 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

  1. Parboil the bell peppers until slightly tender.

  2. In a skillet, sauté the chopped onion in butter until soft.

  3. Add bread crumbs, salt, and Worcestershire sauce to the onion mixture.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff each pepper with 1 tablespoon of the mixture and break an egg over each.

  2. Cover the peppers with additional bread crumbs and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes.

  3. Serve the stuffed peppers on toast.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bell peppers
Act as the edible shell that holds the filling while it bakes.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it sautés, adding savory depth to the filling.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and helps it brown lightly in the skillet.
Bread crumbs
Soak up moisture and give the filling body so it holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the filling and sets as it bakes, holding the stuffing together.

The step that matters

Parboil the bell peppers until slightly tender.. Undercooked peppers stay tough and bitter, while overcooked peppers turn soft and collapse under the filling. Stopping at slightly tender leaves them sturdy enough to hold the stuffing while they finish baking.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, bread, sauce, egg. 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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