Why it works: Eggplant and egg work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 515 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓
Fried Egg Plant
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the eggplant into slices nearly ¾ inch thick and peel them.
Soak the slices in a bowl of cold salted water, weighing them down with a plate for 1 hour.
Remove the slices from the water and dry them with a clean cloth.
Coat and chill
Dip each slice in the beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs and place on a platter.
Chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
Fry and serve
Fry the slices in deep boiling cottolene or other fat until golden brown.
Drain on a colander lined with paper towels and serve on a hot platter.
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.
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Eggplant + eggtop 30% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together515 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggplant
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking down to a soft interior under a crisp coating.
- Beaten egg
- Acts as a binder so the cracker crumbs stick to the slices.
- Cracker crumbs
- Form a crisp, browned coating when fried.
- Cottolene or other frying fat
- Conducts heat to cook the slices and browns the crumb coating.
The step that matters
Dry the slices before coating. Surface water left on the eggplant turns to steam in the hot fat and loosens the crumbs, so the coating can slip off or fry unevenly.
“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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