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Stewed Egg Plant

A stew of tender purple eggplants mixed with bread, marjoram, butter, and cloves, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,075 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Egg Plant

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.

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Place whole purple eggplants in a pot with plenty of water and simmer until tender.

  2. Remove the eggplants, drain, peel off the skins, and mash them in a deep dish.

Season and bake

  1. Mix in grated bread, powdered sweet marjoram, a large piece of butter, and pounded cloves.

  2. Spread a layer of bread over the top and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

  3. Serve in the same dish.

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. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Eggplant + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 recipes

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

  3. Eggplant + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Bread + marjoramtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Purple eggplants
Form the soft, moist body of the dish when simmered and mashed.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and thickens the mash, and browns to form a crust on top.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture, and helps the top brown.
Powdered sweet marjoram
Contributes a warm, aromatic herbal flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer until fully tender. Eggplant flesh must be thoroughly softened before mashing; underdone flesh stays spongy and watery, giving a loose, uneven texture after baking.

Swap the eggplant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, marjoram, butter, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, marjoram, butter, clove. 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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