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Baked

A baked eggplant dish topped with breadcrumbs and seasoned with butter, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Peel and slice the eggplant.

  2. Boil the sliced eggplant in slightly salted water until tender.

  3. Drain and mash the eggplant.

Make the filling

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in milk.

  2. Add the soaked bread crumbs to the mashed eggplant along with salt, pepper, butter, and parsley. Mix well and transfer the mixture to a buttered baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle additional bread crumbs on top.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown, about 1 hour.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Eggplant + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the soft, moist body of the dish once boiled and mashed.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and add body, helping the mash hold together while baking.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and keeps the mixture moist as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The top needs enough time in the oven for surface browning, which comes from heat driving sugars and proteins to react. Pulling it too early leaves the crust pale and the centre under-set, while overbaking can dry the mash.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, pepper, butter, parsley. 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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