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Egg Plant (Peel and slice one or two)
Peel and slice one or two medium-sized egg-plants, put on in cold water, boil till tender, drain, mash fine, season with salt and pepper, and add a beaten egg and a table-spoon of flour; fry in little cakes in butter or butter and lard in equal parts; or cut in slices, lay in cold well-salted water for an hour or two, roll in egg and cracker crumbs, and fry with a little butter. Parsnips and salsify or oysterplant may be cooked in the same way, but the oyster-plant is made in smaller cakes to imitate oysters.
Two methods in one entry: boiled-and-mashed eggplant cakes, and the more familiar breaded fried slices. Both work, but the mash needs help with moisture.
- Salting is the hingeThe soak in "cold well-salted water" for the slice method is not seasoning, it is drawing out water and bitterness. Modern eggplants are bred far less bitter, so 30 minutes in brine (or a dry salting) is plenty; press the slices dry between towels or the breading will slide off in the pan.
- Fix the wet mashBoiled eggplant holds an enormous amount of water, and one egg plus a tablespoon of flour will not bind it. After draining, press the pulp hard in a sieve or twist it in a clean towel, then add flour a spoonful at a time until the mixture holds a shape on the spoon.
- Butter and lard in equal partsThe lard raises the smoke point so the butter does not brown too fast. Any neutral oil cut with a little butter does the same job; keep the fat at a steady moderate heat and do not crowd the pan.
- Cracker crumbsThese were soda or water crackers, crushed fine — coarser and drier than modern breadcrumbs. Crushed saltines are the closest match; panko is a reasonable substitute but browns quicker.
- Salsify, and "oyster-plant"Salsify and oyster plant are the same root (Tragopogon porrifolius), named for a faint oyster flavor. It is rare in supermarkets but turns up at farmers' markets in autumn and winter; peeled salsify browns fast, so hold it in acidulated water.
- YieldOne or two medium eggplants make roughly a dozen or more small cakes, depending on how many you use — enough for two to four as a side dish. The cakes are best straight from the pan; they soften as they sit.
Buckeye Cookery (published in 1877 as Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, out of Ohio) belongs to the era when eggplant was still an uncommon sight in many American kitchens — usually printed as two words, "egg plant," and, by the accepted account, named for the small white ovoid varieties said to resemble hens' eggs. Note how the entry treats it not as a dish in its own right but as one of a family of vegetables handled by a single technique: boil, mash, bind with egg, fry in cakes. That interchangeability is characteristic of nineteenth-century household manuals, which often taught a procedure a cook could apply to whatever the garden or cellar produced. The oyster-plant note is a familiar bit of period culinary make-believe: salsify cakes fried small and round were widely served as mock oysters, an inexpensive stand-in in inland towns where fresh shellfish arrived rarely, if at all.