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French Egg Plant

A stuffed eggplant dish with eggs, breadcrumbs, butter, onion, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

French 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. Wash and quarter the eggplants, leaving the skin on.

  2. Boil in salted water until tender.

  3. Scoop out the insides and mash them like potatoes.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the eggs and mix in the bread crumbs, butter, and ground onion.

  2. Combine all ingredients well and fill the eggplant shells.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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 + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants
Provide the main body of the dish once cooked and mashed.
Eggs
Bind the filling so it holds together when baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the mashed filling.
Ground onion
Adds aroma and savory flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Mashing the cooked eggplant. If the eggplant is not fully tender before mashing, the flesh stays fibrous and lumpy, and the filling becomes uneven. Boiling until soft lets the pulp blend smoothly with the eggs and crumbs.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, onion, 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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