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Stuffed Egg Plant

A baked dish of boiled eggplants filled with ham, breadcrumbs, butter, onion, salt, and pepper.

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

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggplants until tender.

  2. Chop the ham and mix it with bread crumbs, butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Cut the eggplants in half and fill each half with the mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake for 15 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Eggplant + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 edible shell that holds the filling and becomes soft when cooked.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and a chewy texture to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and juices, giving the filling body so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the filling brown and taste rounder.

The step that matters

Boil the eggplants until tender. Eggplant flesh is dense and spongy; cooking it fully softens the cell walls so the halves scoop, hold filling, and eat evenly. Undercooked eggplant stays firm and bitter-tasting.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, bread, butter, onion, 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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