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Stuffed Peppers

A dish of green peppers stuffed with boiled cabbage, simmered in a vinegar and sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Core the peppers, sprinkle with salt, and pour boiling water over them. Let stand overnight.

Fill the peppers

  1. Chop the cabbage, boil it in salted water until tender, then squeeze out the juice.

  2. Fill the peppers with the cabbage mixture.

Cook and seal

  1. Make a sauce by boiling vinegar, water, sugar, and pickle spices together.

  2. Add the stuffed peppers to the boiling sauce and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Place the peppers in a jar and seal tightly.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers
Form the edible shell that holds the cabbage filling and softens during cooking.
White cabbage
Provides the bulk of the filling and absorbs flavour from the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the peppers.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Squeeze out the cabbage juice. Excess liquid left in the cabbage would dilute the sauce and make the filling watery, so it should be drained well before filling the peppers.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, mustard, clove, allspice, vinegar, sugar. 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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