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Peppers Stuffed with Meat

A dish of peppers filled with finely chopped meat, parsley, salt, pepper, tomato, and butter, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Peppers Stuffed with Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Chop the meat very finely and season with parsley, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  2. Remove the tops and seeds from the peppers and wash them.

  3. Stuff the peppers with the meat mixture.

Bake

  1. Place the stuffed peppers in a pan and add a little water and ½ cup of strained tomato.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of butter and ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C), basting frequently for 1 hour.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the filling, adding savory richness and body inside the pepper.
Peppers
Act as the edible shell that holds the filling while the dish cooks.
Strained tomato
Adds moisture and acidity, building a sauce in the pan as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and helps the peppers brown and soften.

The step that matters

Basting frequently during baking. Regular basting keeps the filling and peppers moist over the long, slow bake, preventing the surface from drying out while the sauce reduces.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, pepper, butter):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, pepper, 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.

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