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Fried Egg Plant

A fried eggplant cake made from mashed eggplant, cracker crumbs, eggs, and butter, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Fried Egg Plant

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Parboil the eggplants in boiling salted water with vinegar or lemon juice until tender.

  2. Peel, mash, and drain the eggplants.

Form the cakes

  1. Mix the mashed eggplant with cracker crumbs, beaten eggs, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Moisten the mixture with milk.

  3. Form the mixture into small cakes.

Fry

  1. Fry the cakes in hot fat until brown.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants
Form the bulk of the cakes and supply moisture and soft texture.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so the cakes hold their shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together so the cakes set firm when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor and helps the cakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Drain the eggplant well before mixing. Excess water from the eggplant makes the mixture soggy and loose, so the cakes may fall apart or steam instead of browning in the fat. Adding milk only after the mixture is assembled lets you control how wet it becomes.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, butter, pepper, milk. 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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