Name: Stuffed Egg Plant
Ingredients: 1 eggplant; 1 onion, fried; 2 tablespoons parsley, chopped; 1 egg; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ½ cup bread crumbs; 1 fresh tomato (optional)

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

Cut the eggplant in half and scoop out the center.
Boil the scooped-out flesh until soft, then chop it finely.
In a bowl, mix the chopped eggplant with fried onions, parsley, egg, salt, butter, pepper, and bread.
Stuff the eggplant halves with the mixture.
Cover the stuffed eggplant with bread crumbs.
If desired, add chopped fresh tomatoes on top.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Eggplant + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together651 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Eggplant + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together328 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 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

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (eggplant, onion, parsley, egg, butter, pepper, bread):

Capsicumfits better
Chivefits better
Shallotfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, onion, parsley, egg, butter, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.