Skip to main content
Main

Baked Eggplant

Baked eggplant stuffed with a cracker and parsley dressing.

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

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Baked Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Boil the eggplant in water for 15 minutes.

  2. Cut a slit in the side and remove all the seeds.

  3. Soak the eggplant in cold salted water for 1 hour.

Stuff and bake

  1. Mix the rolled crackers, parsley, pepper, salt, and melted butter to make a dressing.

  2. Fill the eggplant with the dressing.

  3. Place the eggplant in a baking pan with enough water, salt, pepper, and butter to keep it basted.

  4. Bake until hot and serve immediately.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Eggplant + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Biscuit + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Biscuit + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the edible shell and holds the dressing while it cooks.
Rolled crackers or cold biscuits
Bind the dressing and absorb the melted butter to form a stuffing.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing and moisture to the pan.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Soaking the eggplant in cold salted water for 1 hour. Soaking seasons the flesh and helps keep it from drying out during baking. Skipping or shortening it can leave the eggplant bland or tough once it is stuffed and baked.

Swap the eggplant

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, parsley, pepper, butter. 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.

You might also like

Potato BiscuitPotato Biscuit32 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes