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Stuffed Green Peppers

A dish of green pepper halves filled with a mixture of chopped meat, bread crumbs, peas, salt, and pepper, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and peas work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry hexyl acetate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Stuffed Green 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 peppers

  1. Cut the tops off the green peppers and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the pepper shells in strong salt brine for several hours.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped meat, bread crumbs, peas, salt, and pepper.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the liquid from the peas.

  3. Fill the pepper shells with the mixture and secure the tops with toothpicks.

Bake

  1. Place the stuffed peppers in a baking dish with a little water at the bottom to prevent sticking.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes, until the peppers are tender.

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 + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  2. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Meat + peastop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together573 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Chopped cold meat
Provides the main savory flavor and body of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and help bind the filling so it holds its shape.
Canned peas
Add bulk, color, and a mild sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with the liquid from the peas. Bread crumbs soak up liquid, so the filling needs enough moisture to stay tender and not dry out, but too much will make it soggy and loose when baked inside the peppers.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

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