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Preparing Peppers for Stuffing
Cut off the tops of the peppers or cut them in two lengthwise, and remove the inner fibers and seeds. Drop into boiling water, remove from the fire, let stand ten to twelve minutes, then drain.
A parboiling instruction rather than a finished dish, meant to soften bell peppers enough that a stuffing and a short bake will finish them together. The whole point is the off-heat steep.
- Take the pot off the heatThe peppers go into water that is boiling, but the pot is then removed from the burner. Peppers left at a rolling boil for ten minutes collapse and tear when you fill them; the residual heat alone brings them to the right yielding-but-intact stage.
- Which peppers"Peppers" here almost certainly means sweet peppers rather than hot ones, and in this period green bells were the commonest sort on the market. Red, yellow and orange bells work the same way and are sweeter, though thinner-walled specimens soften faster and want the shorter end of the timing.
- Timing by wall thicknessTen to twelve minutes suits thick-walled peppers; thinner ones will be ready sooner, so check early. Test with a knife tip near the shoulder: it should meet slight resistance, not slide through.
- Cut side down to drainWater pools in the cavities and will dilute any stuffing. Invert the halves or cups on a rack or towel for several minutes before filling.
- Removing the fibersThe white pith and pale ribs are usually blamed for any bitterness as much as the seeds. Scrape the interior clean with a spoon after the seed core comes out.
- Tops and halvesCutting lengthwise gives two shallow boats that bake faster and serve more neatly; leaving them whole with a lid cut off holds more filling and looks better on a platter. Trim a sliver from the base of whole peppers so they stand.
- Modern shortcutSome modern recipes skip parboiling and simply bake stuffed peppers longer, or roast them briefly first. Parboiling suits the case where the filling is already cooked and needs only heating through.
- YieldThe recipe gives no count; a reasonable estimate is one large pepper, or two halves, per person.
Stuffed vegetables reach American cookbooks along several routes at once, and the stuffed sweet pepper became a familiar way of turning yesterday's roast, rice or macaroni into today's dinner. Peppers were cheap in late summer, held their shape, and gave a bland leftover filling both a container and a flavor. That the parboiling method is printed as its own separate headnote suggests it was expected to serve a range of different fillings -- the preparation was standard, the stuffing was whatever the household had. Sweet peppers were still largely a seasonal item in this era, before year-round greenhouse and imported supply made them an all-weather vegetable.