Skip to main content
Main

Baked Egg Plant

A baked eggplant stuffed with a seasoned pulp and topped with cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 filling

  1. Parboil the eggplant until tender.

  2. Scrape out the inside of the eggplant.

  3. Heat the butter in a pan and brown the chopped onion.

  4. Mash the eggplant pulp and mix it with bread crumbs, egg yolk, salt, and pepper.

  5. Fry the mixture in the butter and onion until heated through.

Assemble and bake

  1. Replace the mixture back into the eggplant.

  2. Cover with cracker crumbs.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C), basting often while baking.

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. Eggplant + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 once parboiled and mashed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps brown the onion and filling.
Egg yolk
Binds the mashed eggplant and bread crumbs together and adds richness.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the eggplant so the filling holds its shape.

The step that matters

Fry the mixture until heated through. Cooking the mashed filling in butter with the onion drives off excess moisture and develops flavor, so the filling does not turn watery in the eggplant shell while baking.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, bread, egg, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes