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Baked Eggplant

A baked eggplant dish with butter, salt, pepper, and optional breadcrumb stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Baked Eggplant

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 the eggplant

  1. Cut the eggplant in half and score it deeply on both sides.

  2. Rub salt and pepper into the cuts.

  3. Spread butter over the eggplant halves.

  4. Place the buttered eggplant halves in a pan.

  5. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until tender.

Stuff and bake

  1. Scoop out most of the interior.

  2. Mince the scooped interior.

  3. Mix the minced interior with bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and butter.

  4. Fill the eggplant halves with the mixture.

  5. Place the stuffed eggplant halves in an earthen dish.

  6. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until tender.

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

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the tender shell and the soft, edible filling that holds the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the minced eggplant and give the filling body and a lightly firm texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the surface brown and the flesh taste rounder.

The step that matters

Bake until tender before stuffing. Eggplant flesh has a lot of water and stays spongy if undercooked. Baking first softens the cut surfaces so the halves can be scooped and hold the filling without falling apart.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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