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Baked Egg Plant

A baked dish of mashed eggplant with butter, breadcrumbs, and cracker meal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Baked Egg Plant

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Baked 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 eggplants until very tender.

  2. Mash the eggplants and season with butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Butter a baking dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the mashed eggplant, then bread crumbs, and repeat until all ingredients are used.

  2. Sprinkle cracker meal on top and add small pieces of butter.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until browned.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Eggplant + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together265 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants
Form the soft, mashed bulk of the dish and provide its moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and helping the top brown.
Bread crumbs
Form dry layers that soak up some moisture and add light texture.
Cracker meal
Forms a crisp, browned crust on the top layer.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. Eggplant releases a lot of water as it cooks. Baking until the top is browned lets that moisture evaporate, so the dish sets rather than turning soggy.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

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