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Stuffed Peppers II
Prepare peppers as for Stuffed Peppers I. Fill with equal parts of finely chopped cold cooked chicken or veal, and softened bread crumbs, seasoned with onion juice, salt, and pepper.
A thrift recipe that depends entirely on a companion entry: the peppers are hollowed and parboiled first, then filled and baked. A few of its assumptions need translating.
- Prepare the peppersThe first recipe in the pair covers hollowing the peppers (a slice cut from the stem end, seeds and membrane removed) and parboiling the shells briefly before filling; check that entry for the timing. Skip the parboil and the pepper will still be firm and squeaky when the filling is hot.
- Softened bread crumbsNot dry packaged crumbs. This means stale bread torn or grated coarse and moistened with milk, stock or the gravy left from the chicken until it holds together but is not sodden. Dry crumbs used straight will pull moisture from the meat and bake to sawdust.
- Onion juiceA common seasoning of the period: a halved onion pressed against a grater or squeezed in a cloth, giving flavor without visible pieces. The recipe gives no quantity; a teaspoon or so of juice per cup of filling, or a tablespoon of very finely grated onion, does the same work.
- Cold cooked chicken or vealThe recipe exists to use up roast leftovers, so the meat is already fully cooked and the bake is only a reheat. Cooked turkey or pork works identically. If you start from raw meat, cook it through before it goes into the pepper.
- Oven and timeNo temperature or timing is given; the peppers only need reheating through. A moderate oven, around 375F, for 25 to 30 minutes will do it, until the peppers have slackened and the filling is hot through. Standing the peppers in a shallow dish with a little water or stock keeps the bottoms from scorching.
- Finish the topsThe filling as written contains no fat and will look pale. Buttered crumbs scattered over it before baking will give a browned top, though the recipe does not call for them.
- Season firmlyMeat, bread and pepper are all mild. Taste the filling before it goes in and salt it more than seems necessary cold, since it will be eaten hot.
- YieldRoughly two cups of filling fills four to six medium bell peppers. Two per person as a light main course, one as a side.
Stuffed peppers appear in American cookbooks from the late nineteenth century onward, arriving, it is often said, partly through Spanish and Mexican cooking of the Southwest and partly through the Hungarian and Balkan kitchens of immigrant communities, but the version here can plausibly be read as belonging to a different tradition: the New England leftover. Fannie Farmer's book is organized around the domestic-science idea that nothing edible should be discarded and that scraps of cooked meat could be recomposed into a dish with structure, and this is that principle applied to a vegetable shell. The pairing of chicken with veal is a good marker of the period. Veal was generally cheaper and more common in the 1896 market than it is now, and a Boston household may well have had cold roast veal to hand about as often as cold chicken. The numbering of the recipe as "II" is characteristic too: Farmer routinely gave one full method and then a series of variant fillings, which taught a technique rather than a single dish.