Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Peppers

A baked dish of sweet peppers filled with a seasoned meat and breadcrumb mixture, topped with bread crumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter 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. Cut the stem ends off the peppers and remove the seeds carefully.

  2. Soak the emptied peppers in ice‑cold salt water for 1 hour.

  3. Mix the minced meat with bread crumbs or rice to avoid sogginess.

Fill and bake

  1. Season the mixture with onion juice, salt, butter, and gravy, adding tomato juice if desired.

  2. Fill the peppers with the mixture and pack them upright in a baking dish.

  3. Pour gravy between the peppers and sprinkle fine bread crumbs on top.

  4. Cover and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes, then uncover to brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced ham, chicken, veal, or lamb
Provides the savoury meat filling that forms the body of the stuffing.
Bread crumbs or cold boiled rice
Absorbs liquid and gives the filling a firmer texture so it does not turn soggy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the filling and helping it brown.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the filling and the liquid around the peppers.

The step that matters

Covered baking, then uncovering to brown. Baking covered first steams the peppers and filling so they cook through and soften. Uncovering at the end lets surface moisture evaporate, allowing the crumb topping to brown.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ham, bread, onion, butter):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ham, bread, onion, butter. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes