Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Egg Plants

A baked dish of eggplant halves filled with a tomato, onion, parsley, and egg mixture, topped with toasted breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Egg Plants

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 eggplants

  1. Halve and parboil the eggplants until soft enough for a fork to enter.

  2. Remove from water and let cool.

  3. Carefully cut out the inside pulp without breaking the skin.

Make the stuffing

  1. Squeeze the soaked bread to remove excess water and mix it with the eggplant pulp.

  2. Add the chopped tomato, onion juice, parsley, and eggs to the mixture.

  3. Season with pepper and salt, then fill the eggplant halves with the stuffing.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle the tops with toasted bread crumbs.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until heated through.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Eggplant + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants
Form the shell that holds the stuffing and softens into a tender base when parboiled.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds its shape and sets when baked.
Bread
Adds body and soaks up moisture from the pulp, keeping the stuffing soft rather than watery.
Tomato
Adds moisture and a mild acidity that brightens the stuffing.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Cut out the pulp without breaking the skin. The eggplant skin is the container for the stuffing. A tear lets filling leak out and makes the halves collapse during baking, so cut carefully after parboiling, when the flesh is soft but the skin is still intact.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, bread, tomato, parsley, 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes