Skip to main content
Main

Eggplant Salad

A salad of roasted eggplant, green peppers, and tomatoes mixed with olive oil, onion, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Eggplant Salad

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast and prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roast the eggplant, green peppers, and tomatoes in the oven.

  3. Remove the skin and seeds from the vegetables.

  4. Drain the vegetables.

Make the salad

  1. Crush the vegetables using a silver knife and fork.

  2. In a skillet, heat the olive oil and fry the chopped onion until slightly brown.

  3. Combine the fried onion and oil with the crushed vegetables.

  4. Add vinegar, salt, and pepper to taste.

  5. Serve hot or cold.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Eggplant + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together651 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the main body of the salad and gives it a soft, creamy texture when roasted.
Green peppers
Add bulk and a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour that roasting mellows.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that help bind the crushed vegetables into a spread.
Olive oil
Carries flavour and adds richness, coating the crushed vegetables and onion.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Roast the eggplant, green peppers, and tomatoes in the oven.. Roasting until the skins blister and the flesh softens lets the vegetables collapse easily and develops a deeper, sweeter flavour. Underdone vegetables stay watery and firm, which makes the salad thin and bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (eggplant, pepper, tomato, olive, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, pepper, tomato, olive, vinegar. 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.

More eggplant salad recipes

Macedonian 4 See all 11 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes