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Baked Eggplant

Baked eggplant stuffed with breadcrumb and butter mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Eggplant and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,123 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

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 the eggplant

  1. Wash the eggplant and place it in a kettle.

  2. Cover with boiling water and boil for about 30 minutes or until tender.

  3. Remove the eggplant, cut it in half, and carefully scrape out the soft portion, leaving the skin intact.

Fill and bake

  1. Chop the scraped eggplant and mix it with breadcrumbs, butter, salt, and seasoning.

  2. Spoon the mixture back into the eggplant skins, sprinkle with breadcrumbs, and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes to brown.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Eggplant + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together507 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 filling and the skin shells that hold the mixture.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture from the eggplant and add body, with a crisp top when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the filling brown on top.

The step that matters

Scraping out the eggplant. Scraping carefully keeps the skin intact so it can hold the filling. Tearing the skin lets the filling leak out during baking.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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