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Stuffed Egg Plant

A baked dish of eggplant halves filled with a tomato, onion, and breadcrumb mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Eggplant and tomato work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 651 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. 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 eggplant

  1. Boil the eggplant in salted water for 20 minutes or until tender.

  2. Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise and remove the pulp, keeping the shell intact.

  3. Mash the pulp and season with salt and pepper.

Make the filling

  1. Fry the chopped onion in bacon fat until soft.

  2. Add the tomatoes and green pepper to the onion and cook until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the mashed pulp and bread crumbs.

  4. Season with more salt, pepper, butter, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

Bake

  1. Fill the eggplant shells with the mixture, topping with crumbs and bits of butter.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 15 to 20 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.

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. Eggplant + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together651 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Eggplant + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,123 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
Its pulp becomes the soft base of the filling, and the shell holds everything together.
Bread crumbs
Soak up moisture from the vegetables and give the filling body, with crumbs on top for browning.
Tomatoes
Cook down into a thickened sauce that adds moisture and acidity to the filling.
Onion
Softens in bacon fat to build a sweet, savoury base for the filling.
Bacon fat
Carries the onion's flavour and adds richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the tomato and green pepper until thickened. If the mixture stays too wet, it will make the filling soggy and loose. Cooking off the excess liquid concentrates the flavour and lets the bread crumbs hold the filling together.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, pepper, tomato, bread, butter, sauce. 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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