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Stewed Egg Plant

A stew of boiled eggplant and tomatoes flavored with onion, garlic, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Stewed Egg Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Peel and cut each eggplant into 6 or 8 pieces.

  2. Boil the eggplant in water with 1-2 cups of coarse sea salt for 1-2 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in another saucepan.

  2. Add the finely chopped onion and garlic.

  3. Fry until hot but not browned.

  4. Peel and chop the tomatoes.

  5. Add the tomatoes to the saucepan.

  6. Simmer until the eggplant is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain the eggplant.

  2. Sprinkle a heaping teaspoon of flour over the eggplant.

  3. Mix the flour into the tomato sauce.

  4. Add a little cayenne or paprika.

  5. Simmer for 15 minutes.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Eggplant + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together801 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplants
Main body of the dish; softens into a tender, stewed texture during boiling and simmering.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture and acidity, forming the sauce that the eggplant is stewed in.
Flour
Thickens the tomato sauce so it clings to the eggplant rather than running thin.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base in which the onion and garlic are softened.
Onion and garlic
Build aroma and savoury depth as they cook gently in butter without browning.

The step that matters

Fry until hot but not browned. Cooking the onion and garlic gently keeps them sweet and mild; browning them adds bitterness and a different flavour that changes the sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (eggplant, tomato, onion, garlic, butter, flour):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against eggplant, tomato, onion, garlic, butter, flour. 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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