Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Fried Eggplant
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Peel the egg-plant and cut it into six round slices, about ½ inch thick.
Season the slices with ½ teaspoon of pepper.
Dip each slice in the beaten egg, then coat with fresh bread-crumbs.
Fry and serve
Fry the slices in hot fat for 5 minutes until golden brown.
Remove from fat, sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt, and drain well.
Serve on a hot dish over a folded napkin.
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.
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Egg-plant
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into a soft interior under a crisp coating.
- Beaten egg
- Binds the bread-crumbs to the slices so the coating holds during frying.
- Fresh bread-crumbs
- Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
The step that matters
Frying the coated slices. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumbs quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs more oil and turns greasy before the eggplant cooks through. Draining well afterward removes excess surface oil.
“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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