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Stuffed Peppers
2 large green sweet peppers 1 small red sweet pepper, chopped fine 1 cream cheese 4 olives, chopped fine ½ t salt, other favorite seasonings Scald peppers five minutes; rinse in cold water. These should first be washed, split down one side, seeds and stem end removed. Fill washed, split down one side, seeds and stem end removed. Fill scalded peppers with mixture of cheese, red pepper, olives and seasonings. Close filled peppers, fasten with skewers or string. Dip in beaten egg and cracker crumbs, sprinkle with melted butter and bake in 400 degree oven about 15 minutes.
A cold cheese filling in a briefly scalded pepper, breaded and set in a hot oven just long enough to color. The bake is short by design — this is not a long-simmered stuffed pepper.
- Don't overbakeFifteen minutes at 400F is enough to set the crumb coating and warm the filling through. Longer and the cheese runs out of the seam and the pepper collapses.
- The salt quantityThe printed amount for salt is unclear; treat it as about half a teaspoon for two peppers and adjust to taste, since olives and cheese both bring their own salt.
- "1 cream cheese"The recipe gives no weight. Small foil-wrapped packages of around 3 ounces were commonly sold, so about 3 to 4 ounces is a reasonable reading; soften it at room temperature so it can be packed into the shell.
- ScaldingFive minutes in boiling water, then straight into cold, softens the pepper enough to bend without cooking it to mush. Drain them cut-side down and pat the insides dry or the filling will slide.
- Closing themWooden toothpicks do the job better than skewers at this scale. Remove them before serving and press the seam closed as you bread, so the coating seals the edge.
- BreadingEgg first, then cracker crumbs. The recipe does not specify the cracker; plain soda crackers or saltines crushed fine are the likeliest reading. Dry breadcrumbs work but brown faster, so watch the last five minutes.
- YieldTwo peppers, split as directed, serve two as a light lunch or four as a first course. Halve them lengthwise after baking for neater plating.
Church and club cookbooks of the early twentieth century are full of dishes like this one: raw sweet peppers stuffed with cream cheese, nuts or olives were a staple of the American "salad course" and ladies' luncheon table, and this version simply takes the same filling and gives it a hot crumb crust. Cream cheese in small wrapped bricks is often said to have been reaching grocers by then, which may be why it turns up so often in these community collections as a binder for chopped pimiento, olive and nut mixtures. Recipes of the period frequently pair the green bell pepper with the sweet red pepper for color rather than heat.