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Stuffed Egg Plant

A baked eggplant dish stuffed with forcemeat, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Eggplant and tomato work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 651 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Stuffed 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

  1. Cut the stern end off the eggplant and peel it.

  2. Scrape out the center and soak the pieces in a weak brine for 45 minutes.

  3. Drain and finely chop the scraped pieces.

Stuff and bake

  1. Mix the chopped pieces with forcemeat and some cream.

  2. Place the mixture into a deep baking dish with plenty of butter and a little water.

  3. Cover the dish and bake at 350°F (175°C), basting frequently, until done.

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 + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together651 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

  4. Eggplant + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Eggplant + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Its soft flesh becomes the bulk of the filling once cooked and scraped.
Forcemeat
Gives a savoury, meaty body and helps hold the filling together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the chopped eggplant mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Cover the dish and baste while baking. Eggplant flesh dries out easily in dry oven heat. Covering the dish and basting it keep steam and fat around the filling, so it stays moist and tender rather than tough.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cream, butter. 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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