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Fried Egg Plant

Fried eggplant is sliced, salted, coated in egg and crumbs, and fried until brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Fried Egg Plant

Why it works: Eggplant and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 943 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fried Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Slice the desired amount of eggplant and peel it.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and layer in a dish, placing a moderate weight on top for about one hour.

  3. Rinse the eggplant and dry it on a cloth.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the eggplant slices in beaten eggs, then coat with cornmeal or cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot olive oil or cottonseed oil until brown and tender.

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 + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together943 recipes

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

  2. Eggplant + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Egg + olivetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 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

Eggplant
Forms the tender interior that the crisp coating surrounds.
Eggs
Bind the coating to the eggplant slices so the crumbs adhere during frying.
Cornmeal or cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.
Olive oil or cottonseed oil
Conducts heat to brown and crisp the coating while cooking the slices through.

The step that matters

Salting and weighting the eggplant. Salt draws moisture out of the eggplant through osmosis, and the weight presses out more water. Less water means the coating sticks better and the slices fry crisp rather than steaming in the oil.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive. 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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