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Egg Plants

A baked eggplant dish seasoned with pepper, thyme, butter, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Egg Plants

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

  1. Boil the eggplants until tender.

  2. Peel and mash the eggplants.

  3. Season with black pepper, coarse sea salt, thyme, butter, and bread crumbs.

Bake

  1. Mold the mixture in a pie pan.

  2. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top and add dabs of butter.

  3. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Eggplant + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggplants
Form the soft, moist bulk of the dish once boiled and mashed.
Bread crumbs
Add body to the mash and form a crisp, browned topping in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Dried thyme
Adds an herbal aroma that flavors the mashed eggplant.

The step that matters

Boil the eggplants until tender. Eggplant must be fully softened so its cell walls break down. Undercooked flesh stays fibrous and lumpy, and the mash will not blend smoothly or hold its shape in the pan.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, thyme, 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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