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Baked Egg Plant

A baked dish of eggplant halves filled with a mixture of cooked eggplant, butter, egg, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Baked Egg Plant

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise and scoop out the flesh.

  2. Soak the shells in salt water.

  3. Cook the eggplant flesh in salted water until tender, then drain.

Fill and bake

  1. Mix the cooked eggplant with butter, egg, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper.

  2. Wipe out the eggplant shells and fill them with the mixture.

  3. Top with buttered bread crumbs and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Eggplant + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Eggplant + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together265 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the soft, moist body of the filling and the shell that holds it.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top crumbs brown in the oven.
Egg
Binds the filling so it holds its shape when baked.
Bread crumbs
Soak up moisture and add body to the filling; buttered crumbs on top brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Cook the eggplant flesh until tender, then drain well. Eggplant holds a lot of water. If it is undercooked, the filling stays firm and uneven; if it is not drained well, excess liquid thins the mixture and makes it soggy and loose when baked.

Swap the eggplant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, bread, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, bread, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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