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Broiled Eggplant

Thinly sliced eggplant marinated in olive oil and lemon, then broiled until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Eggplant and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 943 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Broiled Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the eggplant into thin slices.

  2. Soak the slices in salted ice water for 1 hour.

  3. Pat the slices dry with towels.

Marinate and season

  1. Marinate the slices in olive oil and lemon juice for 10 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Broil

  1. Broil the slices on a wire broiler for 12 minutes, turning to cook both sides.

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 + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together943 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Eggplant + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together226 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Its spongy flesh softens as it cooks and soaks up the oil and seasoning.
Olive oil
Carries flavor and helps the slices brown and stay moist under the heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich, soft eggplant.

The step that matters

Pat the slices dry with towels. Surface water turns to steam under the broiler and blocks browning, so the slices must be dry before they are marinated and broiled.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, lemon, pepper. 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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