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Stuffed Egg Plant

A baked dish of mashed eggplant seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, cream, topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 eggplant

  1. Cut off one end of the eggplants and steam until tender.

  2. Scoop out the insides and mash them finely.

Season and bake

  1. Season the mashed eggplant with salt, pepper, flour, and cream.

  2. Place the mixture in a baking dish.

  3. Cover the top with bread crumbs and small pieces of butter.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Eggplant + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Eggplant + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants
Form the shell and the soft, mashable filling once steamed.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the mashed filling.
Flour
Thickens the mashed eggplant slightly so it holds together.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp top that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the topping brown and flavors the crust.

The step that matters

Mashing the eggplant finely. Fine mashing gives the filling an even, smooth texture. Coarse lumps can leave pockets of watery or stringy pulp that do not set well with the cream and flour.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, cream, bread, 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.

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