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Stuffed Egg Plant

A baked dish of eggplant halves filled with a seasoned bread crumb and eggplant mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Egg Plant

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 filling

  1. Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise and scoop out the inside, leaving ½ inch of the skin.

  2. Chop the scooped-out eggplant finely and mix it with an equal amount of bread crumbs.

  3. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and a little sugar.

  4. Cook the mixture in butter in a hot frying pan for about 10 minutes, stirring to prevent burning.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the eggplant shells with the mixture and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve the stuffed eggplants in their 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

Eggplant
Forms the edible shell and the soft, moist body of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling body so it holds together rather than turning mushy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the filling brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling in butter. Eggplant releases water and can scorch before it softens. A hot pan and regular stirring drive off moisture and brown the mixture evenly, while stopping it from burning on the bottom.

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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