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Baked Egg Plant

A baked dish of eggplant mixed with bread, hard‑boiled eggs, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Baked Egg Plant

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Baked Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Boil the eggplants until soft, then squeeze out excess water and remove the skin.

  2. Chop the eggplant and pass it through a colander to extract as much water as possible.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated bread, chopped hard-boiled eggs, and butter.

  2. Add the eggplant mixture and season with pepper and salt.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a deep dish, sprinkle grated bread on top, and dot with butter.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until hot and the top is golden.

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. Bread + buttertop 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants
Forms the soft, bulky body of the dish once boiled and chopped.
Stale bread
Absorbs moisture and binds the filling, while the grated topping browns in the oven.
Hard-boiled eggs
Set when mixed in, giving the filling structure and a firmer, sliceable texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor, and helps the top brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the eggplant water. Eggplant holds a lot of water. If it is not drained well, the excess liquid thins the filling and makes it soggy and loose instead of set and spoonable.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, butter, 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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