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Fried Egg Plant

Slices of eggplant are salted, drained, coated in egg and flour, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Fried Egg Plant

Why it works: Eggplant and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 371 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Egg Plant

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Cut the eggplant into slices ⅓ inch thick.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and stack the slices, placing a weight on top.

  3. Let sit for 3 hours, then rinse and dry the slices.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each slice in the beaten egg, then coat with flour.

  2. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Eggplant + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggplant
Forms the tender, moist interior of the fried slices.
Egg
Binds the flour coating to the slices so it adheres during frying.
Flour
Forms a crisp, golden-browning crust when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat to brown the coating and adds richness to the crust.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the coated slices absorb more fat and turn greasy instead of crisp. Frying at a high, steady temperature seals the coating quickly so it browns evenly.

Swap the eggplant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour. 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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