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Breaded Eggplant

Breaded eggplant slices are soaked in saltwater, coated with beaten egg and crackers, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Eggplant and egg work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 515 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Breaded Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Slice the eggplant into pieces nearly half an inch thick.

  2. Pare each slice and soak in a mixture of salt and water for one hour.

  3. Wipe the slices dry.

Bread and fry

  1. Dip each slice in the beaten egg, then coat with rolled crackers.

  2. Fry in salted lard or dripping until golden 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.

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. Eggplant + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the tender interior that sits beneath the crisp crumb coating.
Egg
Binds the rolled crackers to the eggplant so the coating adheres during frying.
Rolled crackers
Form the crisp, golden crust that browns in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Wipe the slices dry before breading. Surface moisture keeps the beaten egg and cracker crumbs from adhering evenly and creates steam that softens the coating, so the crust can fail to crisp and may slide off in the fat.

“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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