Skip to main content
Main

Escalloped Egg Plant

A baked eggplant dish with a creamy parsley filling topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Escalloped Egg Plant

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 the eggplant

  1. Boil the eggplant until tender, then cut it in half and scoop out the pulp, discarding the seeds and skin.

  2. Chop the pulp finely and mix it with bread crumbs, cream, butter, parsley, salt, pepper, and onion juice.

  3. Beat the mixture until well combined, then transfer it to a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the top with dried bread crumbs and small bits of butter.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the top is brown.

  3. Serve in the baking dish.

  4. If there are leftovers, cut into ½-inch thick slices and fry in butter for lunch.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Eggplant + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Eggplant + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,123 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 bulk of the dish, giving it a soft, custard-like body once mashed and baked.
Cream or rich milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping the mixture stay tender rather than dry as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the top crumbs brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture in the mixture and form a browned crust on top.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until well combined. Even mixing spreads the bread crumbs, fat and liquid evenly through the chopped pulp, so the baked dish sets uniformly instead of splitting into wet and dry pockets.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes