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Broiled Eggplant

A sliced eggplant marinated in olive oil, salt, pepper, and shallot, then broiled until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Broiled Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and marinate

  1. Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise.

  2. Marinate the eggplant in olive oil, salt, pepper, and chopped shallot for at least 1 hour.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the eggplant until tender.

  2. Serve with the marinade.

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

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

  2. Eggplant + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Olive + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

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

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 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 bulk of the dish and turns soft and tender when broiled.
Olive oil
Adds moisture and richness and carries the flavor of the marinade into the eggplant.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sharp aroma that complements the eggplant.

The step that matters

Broil the eggplant until tender. Eggplant flesh is dense and spongy until its cell walls soften with heat. Stopping early leaves it firm and bitter-tasting, while cooking until it collapses gives a creamy texture.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, olive, 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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