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Stuffed Eggplant

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stuffed Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the eggplants in half lengthwise and scoop out the flesh, leaving ½ inch of rind.

  2. Chop the flesh finely, season with salt, pepper, and butter, and cook in a frying pan for 10 minutes, stirring well.

  3. Add ½ cup of water and 1 cup of bread crumbs to the mixture.

Stuff and bake

  1. Sprinkle the insides of the eggplant shells with salt and pepper, then fill them with the mixture.

  2. Spread 1 cup of bread crumbs on top of the filled eggplants.

  3. Place the eggplants in a baking dish and add hot water to the dish until it reaches halfway up the sides of the eggplants.

  4. Bake for 1 hour and serve hot on a napkin.

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

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants
Hollowed shells hold the filling and soften as they bake, becoming tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the cooked flesh so the filling holds together and sets lightly.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the chopped flesh brown while it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the chopped flesh. Eggplant flesh holds a lot of water, so it must cook long enough and be stirred well to soften and release moisture. Otherwise the filling stays wet and the bread crumbs turn soggy.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, 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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