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Stuffed Egg Plant

A baked dish of eggplant halves filled with a mixture of chopped eggplant flesh, onion, garlic, eggs, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. 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. Soak the eggplant halves in strong salt water for several hours.

  2. Scoop out the flesh of the eggplant.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the flesh with the onion, garlic, salt, red pepper, and sage.

  2. Fry the mixture in a little butter for 5 minutes.

  3. Break in the raw egg and add the chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Fill the eggplant shells with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the filled shells with bread crumbs.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until 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.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Eggplant + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together801 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants
Form the edible shells that hold the filling while they cook.
Raw egg
Binds the filling so it holds together when baked.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, sliceable texture to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust on top that browns in the oven.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the filling.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during frying.

The step that matters

Soak the eggplant in strong salt water. Soaking draws out bitter compounds and excess moisture from the eggplant flesh, so the shells taste milder and the filling does not become watery during baking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (eggplant, egg, bread, clove, garlic, pepper, sage):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, egg, bread, clove, garlic, pepper, sage. 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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