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Fried Egg Plant

A fried eggplant dish coated in a sour cream and flour batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Fried Egg Plant

Why it works: Eggplant and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 371 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Peel the eggplant and cut it into thin slices.

  2. Soak the slices in salt water for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Steam the slices until tender.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs separately, then combine them.

  2. Add sour cream, salt, baking soda, and enough flour to thicken the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the eggplant slices in the batter.

  2. Fry the slices in boiling lard until they are light brown.

  3. Serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Eggplant + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the tender, mild body of the fried slices once steamed.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it coat the slices and set when fried.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, keeping the batter tender rather than dry.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to lighten the batter and aid browning.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it clings to the eggplant slices.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts heat and browns the batter into a crisp coating.

The step that matters

Fry in fully heated lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot fat sets the coating quickly, so the slices brown evenly and stay light.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, flour. 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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