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Stuffed Egg Plants

A baked dish of eggplant halves filled with bread, tomato, onion, eggs, and spices, topped with toasted breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Eggplant and tomato work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 651 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Stuffed Egg Plants

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the eggplants

  1. Halve the eggplants and parboil them until soft enough for a fork to enter.

  2. Remove the eggplants from the water and let them cool.

  3. Carefully cut the inside of the eggplants without breaking the skin.

Make the stuffing

  1. Squeeze the soaked bread to remove excess water and mix it with the eggplant pulp.

  2. Add the chopped tomato, onion juice, eggs, pepper, and salt to the mixture.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the eggplant halves with the stuffing and sprinkle with toasted bread crumbs.

  2. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until heated through.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  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

Eggplants
Form the edible shell that holds the stuffing while it bakes.
Bread
Soaked then squeezed, it adds body and moisture to the stuffing without making it wet.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing and set when baked, holding the filling together.
Tomato
Adds moisture, acidity and savoury flavour to the stuffing.
Onion juice
Adds sharp aromatic flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Cut the inside of the eggplants without breaking the skin. The skin is the container for the filling. A torn skin lets the stuffing leak out and cook unevenly, so cut carefully after the eggplants have cooled enough to handle.

Swap the onion

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

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

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