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Eggplant

Eggplant cakes made by boiling, mashing, seasoning, battering, and frying or baking with cream, butter, and stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Eggplant

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Boil the eggplant until soft enough to mash.

  2. Remove the skin and mash the eggplant.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then form into cakes about ½ inch thick.

Batter and fry

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, flour, and milk to make a batter.

  2. Dip the cakes in the batter.

  3. Heat lard in a frying pan.

  4. Fry the cakes until light brown on one side.

  5. Turn the cakes and fry until brown on the other side.

Bake and serve

  1. For baking, mix the mashed eggplant with cream, butter, and grated stale bread in a baking dish.

  2. Cut the mixture into slices ⅓ inch thick.

  3. Season the slices with salt and pepper.

  4. Fry the slices until golden.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Provides the soft, mashable bulk that forms the body of the cakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the coating set and hold together when fried.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it coats the cakes and browns in the pan.
Milk
Thins the batter to a coating consistency and adds moisture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the baked mixture.
Grated stale bread
Absorbs moisture and helps the mixture hold its shape in the baking dish.

The step that matters

Forming and frying the cakes at the right heat. Mashed eggplant is wet and soft, so cakes can fall apart or steam instead of browning. Frying in hot lard sets the outer layer quickly, while a moderate heat lets the centre cook through without burning the coating.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, flour, milk, cream, butter, bread. 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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