Why it works: Eggplant and egg work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 515 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓
Fried Eggplant
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Peel the eggplant and cut it into ½-inch thick slices.
Soak the slices in cold salt water for 1 hour.
Wipe each slice dry.
Coat and rest
Dip each slice first in the beaten egg, then in cracker dust.
Set the coated slices in a cold place for 1 hour.
Fry and serve
Fry the slices in deep boiling fat.
Drain in a heated colander before serving.
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.
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Eggplant + eggtop 30% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together515 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
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 to a soft, tender interior.
- Beaten egg
- Binds the cracker dust to the slices so the coating adheres during frying.
- Cracker dust
- Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
The step that matters
Wipe each slice dry. Surface moisture on the slices turns to steam in hot fat and can loosen the coating, so the slices should be dry before dipping and frying.
“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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