Skip to main content
Main

Egg Plant

A fried batter made from mashed eggplant, flour, milk, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Egg Plant

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the eggplant in a porcelain kettle until soft.

  2. Remove the skin and mash the eggplant in a bowl.

  3. Add salt, pepper, flour, milk or cream, and eggs to the mashed eggplant. Mix until you have a nice batter.

Fry

  1. Heat butter and lard in a pan until very hot.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot fat and brown nicely on each side.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Eggplant + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the bulk of the fritters and gives them a soft, moist interior.
Eggs
Bind the mashed eggplant into a batter that holds its shape when fried.
Flour
Adds body to the batter so the fritters hold together in the pan.
Milk or cream
Loosens the batter and adds moisture and richness.
Butter and lard
Fry the fritters, adding fat for browning and flavor.

The step that matters

Heat the fat until very hot before frying. Hot fat sets the outside of each spoonful quickly and browns it, so the batter does not soak up grease or spread out. If the fat is not hot enough, the fritters absorb oil, turn greasy, and brown unevenly.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, milk, egg, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes