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Egg Plant

Fried slices of eggplant coated in egg and breadcrumbs, cooked in lard.

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

Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Slice the eggplant.

  2. Sprinkle the sliced eggplant with salt.

  3. Let the salted eggplant sit for a few minutes to draw out moisture.

Coat and fry

  1. Take a tablespoonful of the eggplant mixture.

  2. Dip the tablespoonful in beaten egg.

  3. Coat the dipped mixture with bread crumbs.

  4. Heat lard in a pan.

  5. Fry the coated eggplant until golden brown.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Eggplant + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Soft flesh turns creamy inside while the outside crisps when fried.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the eggplant.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns in the hot fat.
Lard
Hot fat conducts heat into the coating, driving browning and crispness.

The step that matters

Fry the coated eggplant until golden brown. The lard must be hot before the coated eggplant goes in. Hot fat sets the crumb coating quickly so it crisps rather than soaking up grease. If the fat is too cool, the coating absorbs oil, becomes heavy and greasy, and may fall off.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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