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Stuffed Egg Plant

A baked dish of eggplant halves filled with a mixture of eggs, bacon, mushrooms, onion, parsley, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Cut the eggplants in half lengthwise, leaving the stems on, and parboil in salted water until tender.

  2. Scoop out most of the inside and mash it.

Fill and bake

  1. Add the eggs, bacon, mushrooms, stems, onion, parsley, pepper, salt, and soaked bread crumbs to the mashed eggplant.

  2. Fill the eggplant halves with the mixture and place them in a buttered pan.

  3. Drizzle a little oil on each half and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 40 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Eggplant + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the filling so it holds its shape when baked.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and add body, keeping the filling moist and tender.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the filling.
Eggplant
Its soft, mashed flesh forms the base of the filling and the shell.

The step that matters

Parboil the eggplant until tender. Eggplant flesh is spongy and holds a lot of water. If it is undercooked, the shells stay firm and the filling bakes unevenly; if overcooked, the halves tear and lose shape when scooped and filled.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (eggplant, egg, mushroom, parsley, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, egg, mushroom, parsley, 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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