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Stuffed Peppers

A dish of Mexican peppers filled with calves' brains and white cream sauce, baked until heated.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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 the filling

  1. Parboil the calves' brains in salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Make a white cream sauce and stir in the lemon juice.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the peppers with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until heated through.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Mexican peppers
Hold the filling and soften as they bake.
Calves' brains
Form the main filling, and their protein sets when cooked.
White cream sauce
Adds moisture and richness to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and filling.

The step that matters

Parboil the calves' brains in salted water for 20 minutes.. Parboiling cooks the brains before they are stuffed and baked, firming them so they hold their shape and can be handled. Undercooking leaves the filling raw inside.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cream, sauce. 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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