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To Dress Eggplant

Stuffed eggplant with butter, onion, bread, spices, and toasted crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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To Dress Eggplant

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Dress Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Parboil the eggplants until soft.

  2. Cut the eggplants in half lengthwise and scoop out the inside, leaving the skin whole.

Make the filling

  1. Heat the butter and onion in a pot for a few moments.

  2. Soak the bread in milk, then mix the soaked bread with the onion and butter.

  3. Add salt, black pepper, red pepper, and parsley.

  4. Let the mixture stew for 1 hour.

Bake and serve

  1. Strew grated toast over the mixture.

  2. Place the mixture on a grill for 30 minutes.

  3. Return the mixture to the eggplant shells.

  4. Serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants (in the method)
Their soft flesh is scooped out to form the shells that hold the filling.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it absorbs liquid and gives the filling a soft, moist body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the filling and helping it brown.
Onion
Softened in butter, it adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the filling.
Milk
Soaks the bread, softening it so it blends smoothly into the filling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, bread, milk, pepper, parsley. 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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