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Stuffed Egg Plant, Turkish Style

A Turkish-style stuffed eggplant filled with rice, mutton, onions, and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Stuffed Egg Plant, Turkish Style

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Prepare the eggplant as in the previous recipe.

  2. Cook the rice in white broth until well cooked and dry.

  3. Heat olive oil in a saucepan and lightly fry the onions.

  4. Add garlic, chopped eggplant, and roast mutton; let it simmer slowly.

  5. Stir in the rice, season with salt and red pepper, then add tomato sauce and parsley.

  6. Mix well and let the mixture cool.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the eggplant with the mixture and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Arrange in a buttered pan, drizzle with olive oil, and bake at 350°F (175°C).

Serve

  1. Serve with reduced tomato sauce.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the edible shell and soft, moist filling base once cooked.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and adds bulk and body to the filling.
Onions
Lightly fried to build sweetness and savory depth in the filling.
Roast mutton
Provides rich meaty flavor and fat that carries through the filling.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and moisture that keeps the filling from drying out.
Olive oil
Carries fat for gentle frying and helps the top brown while baking.

The step that matters

Cook the rice until well cooked and dry. Rice that is undercooked stays firm and gritty, while rice left wet adds extra moisture that makes the stuffing soggy. Cooking it fully and drying it before mixing gives the filling a tender, spoonable texture.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (eggplant, rice, onion, olive, garlic, mutton, pepper):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, rice, onion, olive, garlic, mutton, pepper. 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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