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Timbals of Egg Plant, Mackay Style

A baked eggplant timbal filled with mutton, herbs, and breadcrumbs, glazed with Madeira wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Timbals of Egg Plant, Mackay Style

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Peel and cut the eggplants lengthwise into six pieces each. Trim to make them uniform and season with coarse sea salt.

  2. Cover and let sit for one hour, then drain and dry on a napkin.

  3. Melt butter in a flat saucepan, add the eggplant, and fry lightly. Drain on a napkin.

  4. Once cooled, arrange the eggplant in a buttered timbal mold to cover the sides and bottom.

  5. Peel and slice two eggplants, flour them, and fry lightly in clarified butter on both sides. Drain on a napkin.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped mutton, cooked fine herbs, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and egg yolks. Mix well.

  2. Layer the stuffing and fried eggplant in the mold until filled. Cover with buttered paper.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn the mold onto a dish, remove carefully, and glaze with reduced Madeira wine sauce. Serve with brown Italian 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Eggplant + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Eggplant + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggplants
Form the tender body and edible shell of the timbal once fried and layered.
Mutton
Provides the savory, meaty filling that gives the timbal its substance.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing together so it holds its shape when turned out of the mold.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the filling hold together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and browning to the eggplant as it fries.

The step that matters

Drying the salted eggplant before frying. Salting draws out water; if the pieces are not dried well, they will steam rather than brown in the hot fat and may splatter.

Swap the eggplant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, mutton, bread, pepper, egg, madeira wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mutton, bread, pepper, egg, madeira wine. 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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