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Stuffed Egg Plant

A baked eggplant stuffed with a tomato, onion, and eggplant mixture, topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Eggplant and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed 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 filling

  1. Scoop out the inside of the eggplant.

  2. Chop the scooped eggplant and add it to a pot with the tomato, onion, and butter.

  3. Cover with water and cook until tender and nearly dry.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and red pepper.

  5. Add enough bread crumbs to fill the eggplant.

Bake and serve

  1. Top with more bread crumbs and bits of butter.

  2. Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven and brown.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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 + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Eggplant + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together651 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 body of the filling.
Tomato
Adds moisture and acidity that help break down the filling as it cooks.
Onion
Adds savory depth and sweetness as it softens during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid from the filling and help it hold its shape while baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the top crumbs brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook until tender and nearly dry. If the filling keeps too much water, it will be soggy and the bread crumbs will not hold it together. Cooking it down concentrates the flavor and leaves a spoonable mixture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (eggplant, tomato, butter, pepper, bread, lettuce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, tomato, butter, pepper, bread, lettuce. 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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