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Stuffed Sweet Peppers

A baked dish of sweet peppers filled with meat, rice, and seasonings, topped with a brown roux gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Stuffed Sweet Peppers

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the peppers

  1. Make an incision in one side of each sweet pepper and remove the seeds using a stick.

  2. Stuff the peppers with a mixture of your choice of meat, boiled rice, coarse sea salt, a dash of onion juice, and a little butter.

  3. Sew up the peppers with a few stitches and place them in a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour in enough weak stock to prevent burning, cover, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  2. Once baked, remove the strings and keep the peppers hot.

  3. Add a tablespoon of brown roux to the gravy in the dish, boil briefly, and pour over the peppers.

  4. If the gravy is too thick, add a little boiling water to thin it out.

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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet peppers
Act as the edible shell that holds the filling and softens as it bakes.
Boiled rice
Bulks out the filling and absorbs juices so it stays moist rather than dense.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the filling and carries flavour.
Brown roux
Thickens the stock into a gravy and adds a toasted, nutty depth of flavour.
Weak stock
Provides moisture in the dish so the peppers steam and the bottom does not scorch.

The step that matters

Adding enough stock before baking. Without enough liquid in the dish, the peppers and the bottom of the pan can scorch, and the gravy base depends on that stock being present.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, chicken, rice, 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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