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Egg Plant

A stuffed eggplant filled with a butter and cream‑flavored mash and topped with bread crumbs, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Egg Plant

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 ↓

Egg Plant

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 eggplant

  1. Boil the eggplant until tender.

  2. Cut it in half and scoop out the center.

Fill and bake

  1. Mash the pulp and season with salt, pepper, butter, and cream.

  2. Fill the eggplant shell with the mixture.

  3. Sprinkle the top with bread crumbs and a small piece of butter.

  4. Brown in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the tender pulp and shell that hold the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mashed pulp and helps the topping brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping on the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and a smoother, softer texture to the mashed filling.

The step that matters

Brown in a 350°F (175°C) oven. Browning depends on surface heat reaching the buttered crumbs. Too low a temperature or too little time leaves the topping pale and soft, while the filling still needs enough heat to become hot throughout.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, cream, 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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