No. 2768

Green Peppers Stuffed

Piments Verts Farcis

Plunge the peppers into hot fat, leaving them in sufficiently long to be able to detach the outer skin by rubbing with a cloth; cut off the stalk ends and empty out the seeds, etc. Prepare a forcemeat with finely chopped onions and fry it in oil with as much cut-up peppers; let get cold, then mix in a quarter of a pound of cooked sausage meat (No. 68), a quarter of a pound of chopped fresh mushrooms and a little thick tomato puree (No. 730). Put the whole into a saucepan on the fire, boil, thicken with bread-crumbs and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg; when partially cold stir in four egg-yolks. Fill the peppers with this, lay them on a baking pan covered with thin slices of fat pork, pour butter over and set in a moderate oven for fifteen minutes; dress in a circle, pouring a little light half-glaze sauce (No. 413) in the center.

← No. 2767 Parsnip Cakes Fried in Butter Tomatoes, Corn & Garden Vegetables No. 2769 Sweet Peppers Sauted →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has sausage meat, tomato purée and half-glaze standing by, so most of the work here is assembling those cross-references. The filling is fully cooked before it goes into the peppers, which is why the oven time is so short.

The fat bath is a peeling methodDropping the peppers into hot fat blisters the skin so it rubs off with a cloth; Ranhofer gives no temperature or timing, only that they stay in long enough for the skin to detach. Charring them over a flame or under a broiler and steaming them in a covered bowl does the same thing with less mess; keep them firm enough to hold a filling.
The numbered referencesNo. 68 is Ranhofer's cooked sausage meat, No. 730 a reduced tomato purée, No. 413 a half-glaze — demi-glace, a brown sauce reduced with stock. Good bulk sausage, thick tomato paste loosened with stock, and a jarred or homemade demi-glace stand in without harm.
Moderate ovenConventionally read as about 350F, though the book gives no temperatures at all. Fifteen minutes is enough to heat the stuffing through and set the yolks, since everything in it was cooked in the saucepan first. If you prefer the peppers soft rather than just tender, give them 25 to 30 minutes.
Egg yolks go in warm, not hotFour yolks bind the forcemeat. Stirring them into a boiling mixture scrambles them, hence "when partially cold" — let it drop to about body temperature first.
Fat porkThin slices of fresh pork fatback or unsmoked salt pork, laid on the pan so the peppers do not scorch and the base bastes them. Blanch salt pork briefly if it is heavily cured, or use bacon and accept the smoke.
Unstated quantitiesThe onions, "as much cut-up peppers" and the breadcrumbs are all left to judgment. A quarter pound each of sausage and mushrooms with one medium onion will fill perhaps half a dozen peppers, depending on their size; add crumbs a spoonful at a time until the mixture holds its shape on a spoon.
ServingDressed in a circle with the sauce pooled in the center, and placed in the book's chapter of tomatoes, corn and garden vegetables, this reads as a garnish or vegetable course rather than a main dish. Serve it hot; the yolk-bound stuffing turns pasty cold.

A Little History

This is No. 2768 from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The book is organized as a working reference — preparations point to one another by number, so a single stuffed pepper draws on the sausage meat, tomato purée and half-glaze made elsewhere in the kitchen. Ranhofer gives the peppers a French name and a French treatment: peeled, filled with a bound forcemeat, and finished with a brown sauce. Peeling by a plunge into hot fat is a method suited to a kitchen with a fry kettle always at temperature, and it appears in older French manuals alongside the flame-charring method more familiar today.