Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Egg Plant

A baked dish of eggplant filled with a mushroom, currant, and breadcrumb mixture, served with a mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Boil the eggplant gently until tender, then remove from heat.

  2. Carefully scoop out the pulp, leaving a shell about ¼ inch thick.

Make the filling

  1. Peel and stem the mushrooms, chop finely, and reserve 1 tablespoon for the sauce.

  2. In a bowl, mix the eggplant pulp, chopped mushrooms, currants, onion, green pepper, bread crumbs, melted butter, and cream.

  3. Fill the eggplant shell with the mixture, press it into shape, and bind with string.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake for 20 minutes, then remove the string and serve on a platter with sauce.

  2. For the sauce, boil the mushroom skins and stems in water until tender, then drain.

  3. Add the reserved mushrooms to the water, season with salt and pepper, and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Stir in the flour mixed with butter, cook until thick, and pour around the eggplant.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Eggplant + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the edible shell and the soft, moist pulp that makes up the filling.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the filling, and flavor the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the filling body so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the filling brown and carrying flavor.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling soft and tender.
Flour
Thickens the mushroom sauce so it coats the eggplant.

The step that matters

Scooping out the eggplant pulp. If the shell is torn or too thin, it will break or leak during filling and baking. Leaving a sturdy wall of about ¼ inch keeps the shape while the pulp is mixed into the filling.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (eggplant, mushroom, onion, pepper, bread, butter, cream):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, mushroom, onion, pepper, bread, butter, cream. 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.

More stuffed eggplant recipes

Turkish 3 See all 156 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes