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Stuffed Egg Plants

A baked dish of eggplants filled with a crumbly cracker and herb mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Eggplant and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Stuffed Egg Plants

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 eggplants

  1. Boil the eggplants until somewhat tender to reduce bitterness.

  2. Slit each eggplant down the side and remove the seeds.

Stuff and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated cracker, butter, minced herbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and beaten egg yolks to make the stuffing.

  2. Fill each eggplant with the stuffing mixture.

  3. Bake the stuffed eggplants in a 350°F (175°C) oven until heated through.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy poured around them in the dish.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Eggplant + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants
Form the edible shell that holds the stuffing and softens when boiled and baked.
Grated cracker
Absorbs moisture and gives the stuffing body so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and keeping the stuffing moist.
Beaten egg yolks
Bind the stuffing and set when heated, helping it hold together.

The step that matters

Boil the eggplants until somewhat tender. Eggplant can taste bitter and be tough when raw. Boiling softens its flesh and draws out some bitterness, so it cooks evenly and becomes easy to scoop and fill.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, egg. 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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