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Fried Eggplant

A fried eggplant dish with breaded slices served hot with tomato ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Fried Eggplant

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 ↓

Fried Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the eggplant and slice it into 1/16-inch thick slices.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg lightly and mix in the hot water.

  3. Dip each slice of eggplant first into the egg mixture, then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the lard or dripping in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Place a few slices of eggplant in the pan and fry until brown on one side.

  3. Turn the slices and fry until brown on the other side.

  4. Add more fat as needed, allowing it to reheat before adding more eggplant.

  5. Drain the fried eggplant on paper and serve hot with tomato ketchup.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Eggplant + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together265 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Bread + ketchuptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together813 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into tender slices inside a crisp coating.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the eggplant slices so the coating stays on during frying.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned coating that protects the eggplant and adds texture.
Lard or dripping
Fat for frying that conducts heat and browns the coating.

The step that matters

Keep the fat hot and add eggplant in small batches. Crowding the pan or adding slices to cooler fat lowers the frying temperature, so the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp. Reheating the fat between batches keeps the coating crisp and browned.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

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