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Green Peppers, Etc
One cup dry bread crumbs, one-third teaspoonful salt, one-quarter teaspoon pepper, one teaspoon onion juice, one tablespoon chopped parsley, two tablespoons melted butter substitute. Hominy, rice, or other cooked cereal may take the place of crumbs.
This is a filling rather than a finished dish: the section heading supplies the vessel, and the recipe supplies what goes in it. Everything hinges on the fact that it is dry, so it needs both a moist container and something to keep it from setting into a brick.
- YieldRoughly a cup of stuffing, enough for two or three medium bell peppers depending on how generously they are filled. Scale up in whole batches rather than trying to stretch it with extra crumbs.
- Butter substituteIn the period this generally meant oleomargarine or a vegetable shortening. Use butter, or a neutral oil if you want it dairy-free; the two tablespoons are the only fat in the mixture and should not be reduced.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion on a fine grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or grate directly on a microplane and use pulp and all. A teaspoon of juice is roughly what half a small onion gives up.
- Dry crumbs, not freshDry bread crumbs are oven-dried bread ground fine, closer to unseasoned panko in behaviour than to soft fresh crumbs. Fresh crumbs will slump and go pasty here; if that is all you have, use a scant cup and expect a denser result.
- It needs moistureAs written the mixture is bone dry. A few tablespoons of stock, tomato pulp, milk, or the water the peppers were parboiled in will make it cohere and keep it from scorching on top.
- The cereal variationHominy here means cooked hominy grits or whole hominy, not dry grits. Rice or hominy should be measured cooked and cooled, and both bring their own moisture, so hold back any added liquid until you have judged the texture.
- Cooking the peppersParboil halved, seeded peppers three to five minutes before filling, or they will still be raw when the top has browned. Bake filled peppers at 350F for 25 to 30 minutes, uncovered, with a little water in the pan.
- SeasoningA third of a teaspoon of salt for a cup of crumbs is modest, and modern commercial crumbs vary in salt. Taste the mixture before it goes into the peppers.
Stuffed green peppers belong to the era of American domestic science, when cooking-school teachers were promoting vegetables as containers for savoury fillings and as meatless main dishes. Recipes that specify a butter substitute rather than butter often date from a period of household economy. Note too what the recipe assumes its reader already knows -- there is no instruction to seed the peppers, no oven temperature, no time. A cook book of this vintage was often a collection of proportions, on the understanding that the method would come from a mother, a neighbour, or the general chapters at the front of the volume.