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Stuffed Eggplant

A baked dish of eggplants filled with a savory bread and onion mixture, topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Eggplant and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Stuffed Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the eggplants for 10 minutes, then split them open lengthwise and scrape out all the seeds.

  2. Soak the bread in cold water, then squeeze out all the water.

Make the filling

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter and add the chopped onion.

  2. Fry the onion until browned but not scorched.

  3. Stir in the soaked bread, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and beef gravy; cook for 1 minute.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill both halves of the eggplant with the mixture and place them in a baking dish, stuffing side up.

  2. Dust with bread crumbs, add a teaspoon of butter on top of each, and bake until browned.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

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

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Eggplant + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,123 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
Hold the filling as a soft, edible shell that becomes tender when parboiled and baked.
Bread
Soaked and squeezed, it binds the filling and gives it a soft, moist body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the onion and topping brown.
Onion
Browns in the butter to add savory sweetness and depth of flavor to the filling.
Beef gravy
Adds meaty savoriness and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Fry the onion until browned but not scorched. Browning builds sweet, savory flavor through the Maillard reaction, but scorched onion turns bitter and spoils the filling.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, bread, pepper, nutmeg, beef. 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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