Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Stuffed Eggplant
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
Prepare the eggplants as you would for stuffed cucumbers, but do not close the sides.
Round the eggplants with the stuffing.
Cover the tops with bread crumbs.
Bake
Place the eggplants in a baking pan with butter and boiling water.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour, until tender.
If the oven is too hot, cover the eggplants with thick paper or a tin pie plate until a few minutes before done.
Remove the eggplants to a warm dish.
Make the sauce and serve
Add broth to the pan.
Stir the broth.
Bring the broth to a boil.
Blend corn starch with a little cold water.
Add the corn starch mixture to the boiling broth.
Stir and boil for 3 minutes.
Serve the eggplants in a sauceboat with the sauce.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Eggplant + corntop 11% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together25 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
-
Butter + corntop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Eggplant + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together265 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Bread + corntop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together547 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender as they bake.
- Bread crumbs
- Form the stuffing and topping, adding body and a light golden surface when baked.
- Butter
- Adds richness and helps the eggplants brown and stay moist in the pan.
- Corn starch
- Thickens the boiling broth into a smooth sauce.
- Broth
- Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying savory flavor.
The step that matters
Adding the corn starch mixture to the broth. Starch must be fully dispersed in cold water before it meets hot liquid, or it clumps. It then needs to boil while stirred so the starch granules swell and thicken the sauce evenly.
Swap the eggplant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, corn):
- Capsicumfits better
- Potatofits better
- Tomatofits better
- Eggplantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, corn. 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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