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Egg Plant

Breaded eggplant slices fried until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Egg Plant

Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the eggplant.

  2. Cut it into slices ½ inch thick.

  3. Soak the slices in salted water for 20 minutes.

  4. Dry each slice with a cloth.

Bread and fry

  1. Dip the slices in egg.

  2. Coat the slices with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot oil over medium-high heat for 15 minutes, or until browned and cooked through.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Eggplant + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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, becoming soft and tender when cooked through.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the eggplant slices so the coating stays on during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Drying each slice before breading. Eggplant holds a lot of moisture. Patting the slices dry before dipping in egg helps the coating adhere and stay crisp instead of becoming soggy or sliding off in the oil.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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