Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Egg Plant

Stuffed eggplant filled with a seasoned bread crumb mixture, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Stuffed 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 shells

  1. Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise and scoop out the insides, leaving about ½ inch of skin.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the eggplant flesh finely and mix it with an equal amount of bread crumbs.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and sugar to the mixture.

  3. Heat the butter in a skillet and add the mixture, cooking for 10 minutes while stirring occasionally.

Bake and serve

  1. Return the mixture to the eggplant shells and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 30 minutes.

  2. Serve in the shells.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the edible shell and the soft, moist filling once cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the eggplant and help bind the filling together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the filling brown lightly in the skillet.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the eggplant's bitterness.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling in the skillet. Stirring while the chopped eggplant and crumbs cook for 10 minutes drives off excess moisture and prevents scorching, so the filling holds together rather than turning watery or sticking to the pan.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, sugar, butter. 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.

More stuffed eggplant recipes

You might also like