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Dixie Baked Eggplant

A baked eggplant dish with breadcrumbs, eggs, butter, cream, pepper, and salt.

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

Dixie Baked 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

  1. Pare, quarter, and steam the eggplant.

  2. Mash the eggplant until fine.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine the mashed eggplant, bread crumbs, 2 eggs, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a scalloped dish.

  3. Beat 1 egg with cream and pour over the mixture.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Eggplant + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together265 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 soft, moist body of the dish once mashed.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so it holds together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm custard when baked.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the egg topping, keeping it tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Mash the eggplant until fine. Lumps of eggplant will not bind evenly with the eggs and crumbs, so the baked dish may be uneven and watery in texture.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

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

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