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Baked Egg Plant

A baked eggplant stuffed with cheese, garlic, egg, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Baked Egg Plant

Why it works: Eggplant and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 801 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Baked Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Boil the eggplant for about 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the inside of the eggplant and place it in a bowl.

Make the filling

  1. Add cheese, minced garlic, egg, oil, and salt to the bowl, then mix all the ingredients together.

  2. Transfer the mixture back into the eggplant skin.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a pan until heated through and 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Eggplant + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Cheese + garlictop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  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
Its flesh softens when boiled and its skin holds the filling in shape.
Egg
Binds the filling together and sets when heated, giving it structure.
Cheese
Melts into the filling and browns in the oven, adding savory richness.
Oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and keeps the filling moist.
Garlic
Contributes a sharp, aromatic flavor that mellows with cooking.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (eggplant, cheese, garlic, egg):

  1. Oreganofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, cheese, garlic, 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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