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Egg Plant
Pare and slice them; put in salted water, where it should remain ong enough to extract all bitterness; then wipe each piece dry, and dip first in beaten egg, then in fine cracker crumbs; sprinkle over each piece very little pepper, and fry in hot fat. Serve while hot.
You must not remove them from the water until ready to cook, as the air will turn them black.
A straightforward breaded fried eggplant, written when the vegetable was still bitter enough to need a long soak. A few of the assumptions behind it no longer hold.
- The soak is now optionalModern eggplant varieties have been bred largely free of the bitterness this recipe is guarding against. A 30-minute salting still helps by drawing out moisture so the slices absorb less fat, but you are no longer extracting anything unpleasant.
- Salted water vs. dry saltingThe original submerges the slices; current practice is to salt cut slices dry, let them weep in a colander, then blot. Either works, but soaked slices must be pressed very firmly between towels or the coating will slide off in the pan.
- DiscolorationThe warning about air turning them black is sound — cut eggplant oxidizes quickly. It is cosmetic only, and the discoloration is largely hidden once the slices are breaded and fried.
- Cracker crumbsPeriod cracker crumbs meant plain soda or water crackers, crushed fine. Unsalted saltines or panko both work; if you use salted crackers, cut back on any additional salt, since the flesh has already absorbed some from the soak.
- ThicknessNo thickness is given. Quarter-inch to half-inch slices cook through in the time the crust takes to brown; anything thicker will still be raw at the center when the crumbs are dark.
- "Hot fat"Shallow-fry in about a quarter inch of oil at 350–365°F. Below that the porous flesh drinks oil; much above it and the egg-and-crumb coating scorches before the interior softens. Two to three minutes a side.
- YieldOne medium globe eggplant, roughly 1 lb, gives eight to ten slices and serves three or four as a side. Serve immediately — the crust goes soft within minutes.
Eggplant reached American tables slowly. It was grown in kitchen gardens through the 18th and early 19th centuries but was often treated as ornamental or suspect, being a nightshade, and older varieties were reportedly bitter and seedy in a way that would account for the soaking step preserved here. By the time compilations like this one were printed, it appears in American cookery largely in this form: pared, sliced, egged, crumbed and fried, alongside its other common fate of being stuffed and baked. The instruction to keep the slices underwater until the moment of cooking is a small piece of practical observation — the cooks simply knew that exposed cut surfaces went black, and worked around it.