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Fried Eggplant

A fried eggplant dish seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fried Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Peel and slice the eggplant thinly.

  2. Sprinkle each slice with salt and pepper.

  3. Stack the slices evenly and place a tin plate on top with a weight to press out the juice.

  4. Let the slices stand for 1 hour.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each slice in flour.

  2. Sprinkle each slice with salt and pepper.

  3. Heat the dripping in a frying pan.

  4. Fry the eggplant slices on both sides, adding more fat as needed.

  5. Roll the slices in bread crumbs or a mixture of flour and crumbs before frying.

  6. Drain the fried slices on brown paper.

  7. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Forms the main body of the dish; pressing draws out its moisture so slices fry crisper.
All-purpose flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the slices brown and crisp when fried.
Dripping
Conducts heat to the slices and gives them browning and a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Pressing and resting the eggplant. Eggplant holds a lot of water. Pressing it under a weight for an hour draws out juice, so the slices fry crisp instead of steaming and turning soggy in the pan.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, 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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