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Stuffed Eggplant

A baked dish of eggplant filled with a mixture of chopped eggplant flesh, salt pork, bread crumbs, onion, garlic, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggplant

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. Soak the eggplants in strong salt water for several hours.

  2. Cut the eggplants lengthwise and scrape out the flesh.

  3. Chop the eggplant flesh.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the chopped flesh with the salt pork, bread crumbs, onion, garlic, salt, red pepper, and sage.

  2. Fry the mixture in a little butter for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the fresh raw egg and the chopped hard-boiled eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the eggplant skins with the mixture.

  2. Cover the tops with fine white bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Eggplant + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together801 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Eggplant + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants
Form the edible shell and bulk of the filling, softening as they cook.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, sliceable texture to the stuffing.
Fresh raw egg
Binds the filling so it holds together when baked.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that moistens the filling.
Browned bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and a toasty flavor.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that deepens the savory flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the mixture in butter before adding the eggs. Frying drives off excess moisture from the eggplant and browns the savory base, so the filling does not turn watery. Adding the raw egg after this step keeps it from scrambling and lets it bind the stuffing as it bakes.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, egg, pork, bread, onion, garlic, 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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