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Stewed Eggplant

A stew of eggplant and lima beans in a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew the eggplant

  1. Soak and stuff the egg-plant as directed previously.

  2. In a pot, add the egg-plant and cover it with soup stock.

  3. Stew the egg-plant, covered, for one hour or until very tender.

  4. Keep the egg-plant hot in a deep dish.

Make the gravy

  1. In a separate bowl, stir a lump of butter rolled in flour into the gravy.

  2. Boil the gravy and pour it over the egg-plant.

Cook the Lima beans

  1. For the Lima beans, shell and cook them in boiling salted water for about forty minutes.

  2. Drain the beans, season with pepper and salt, and stir in a good lump of butter before serving.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + lima beanstop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

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

  3. Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Eggplant (in the method)
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes soft and tender during slow stewing.
Soup stock
Provides the liquid that stews the eggplant and forms the base of the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the gravy and the beans.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when rolled with butter and stirred in.
Lima beans
Adds body and a starchy, mild bean texture to the plate.

The step that matters

Stew the eggplant until very tender. Eggplant must cook long enough, covered in liquid, for its dense flesh to soften fully. Stopping early leaves it firm and bitter-tasting, so check for tenderness rather than relying only on the clock.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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.

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