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Egg Fruit, Stuffed

Egg fruits stuffed with sautéed onions, garlic, sage, tomatoes, pepper, and brown gravy, baked or braised.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Egg Fruit, Stuffed

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. Cut off the ends of the egg fruits and halve them.

  2. Scoop out the interior and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Let sit for 1 hour.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the onions and fry them until nearly black.

  2. Add minced garlic, sage leaves, chopped tomatoes, pepper, and salt.

Stuff and cook

  1. Let brown in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Stuff the egg fruits with the mixture and dip them in oil.

  3. Place in a stewpan with a little brown gravy and braise.

  4. Or roast in the oven in oiled paper cases.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Garlic + sagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 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

What each ingredient does

Egg fruits
Hollowed halves form the shell that holds the filling while it cooks.
Onions
Frying until nearly black builds deep, sweet, savoury browning for the filling.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that help soften and flavour the stuffing.
Sage leaves
Contribute an aromatic, earthy flavour to the filling.
Brown gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth when the eggplant is braised.

The step that matters

Salting and resting the eggplant. Salt draws out water and bitter compounds from the flesh over the hour of resting. Skipping or shortening this step leaves the eggplant wetter and more bitter, which can make the stuffed halves soggy and harsh.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, onion, garlic, tomato, pepper):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, onion, garlic, tomato, 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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