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Stuffed Eggplant

A baked dish of eggplant halves filled with a seasoned breadcrumb mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Stuffed Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the eggplants in half lengthwise and remove the insides, leaving ½ inch of peel.

  2. Chop the insides finely and mix with the bread crumbs.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and brown sugar to the mixture.

  4. Cook the mixture in butter or dripping in a frying pan for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the eggplant shells with the mixture and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve in the shells.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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 edible shells that hold the filling and soften during baking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the eggplant pulp and give the filling body and structure.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown slightly in the pan.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat for richness and helps the filling take on flavour as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling in the frying pan. Stirring constantly over heat drives off excess moisture from the chopped eggplant so the filling stays thick rather than soggy, and keeps the bread crumbs from scorching in the fat.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, sugar, butter. 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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