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Baked Eggplant

A baked eggplant dish seasoned with salt, pepper, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Eggplant

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the eggplant into pieces.

  2. Boil the pieces until tender.

  3. Drain and mash the eggplant.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Place in a baking dish.

  2. Cover with bread crumbs moistened with butter.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Eggplant + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together265 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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
Form a crisp, golden topping when baked.
Butter
Moistens the bread crumbs and helps them brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Boil the pieces until tender. Eggplant that is not fully tender will stay firm and watery when mashed, giving a loose texture. Cooking it through lets it break down smoothly and hold its shape under the crumb topping.

Swap the eggplant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, 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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