Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Egg Plant

A baked eggplant stuffed with a butter, pepper, salt, cheese or almond mixture and topped with buttered breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Eggplant and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,123 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 the eggplant

  1. Boil the eggplant until tender.

  2. Cut the eggplant in half and remove the insides.

Make the filling

  1. Mash the insides and season with butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add grated cheese or chopped almonds and mix well.

  3. Spoon the mixture back into the eggplant shells.

Bake

  1. Top with buttered breadcrumbs.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until browned.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Eggplant + cheesetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together110 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the edible shell and the soft, mashed filling base.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mashed filling and helps the top brown.
Grated cheese or chopped almonds
Adds body and savoury flavour to the filling, with almonds adding a crisp bite.
Buttered breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping through browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until browned. Baking long enough lets the buttered breadcrumbs toast and the filling heat through. Too little time leaves the filling cool and the topping pale, while overbaking dries the mixture.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cheese. 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.

More stuffed eggplant recipes

Turkish 3 See all 156 →

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes