Home › Vegetables › Egg Plant (Peel and cut in slices)
Egg Plant (Peel and cut in slices)
Peel and cut in slices the purple kind, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and let drain on a tipped plate for three-quarters of an hour; make a light batter with one egg, flour and a little water, dip the slices into it and fry in butter or lard. Eggs and cracker may be used instead of the batter. Or, peel the egg-plant, boil till done, then pour off the water, mash fine, and pepper, butter and salt to taste, put in a shallow pudding-pan, and over the top place a thick layer of crushed cracker. Bake half an hour in a moderate oven.
Two methods in one entry: batter-fried slices, and a boiled-and-mashed gratin. Both are sound; the salting step at the start is the part that decides how the fried version turns out.
- The salting is the hingeThree-quarters of an hour on a tipped plate draws out water and collapses the sponge-like flesh so it absorbs less fat. Blot the slices dry before they go into the batter or the coating will slide off.
- "The purple kind"Nineteenth-century seed catalogues also sold white and striped eggplants, which is probably why the color is specified. Any common globe or Italian eggplant answers; slice about 1/2 inch thick.
- PeelingModern eggplants are bred less bitter and thinner-skinned, so peeling is optional for the fried version. Peel for the mashed version, where strips of skin stay tough.
- Moderate oven350F. Half an hour is enough to heat the mash through and brown the cracker top; run it under the broiler for a minute if it stays pale.
- Cracker crumbs"Crushed cracker" means plain soda or water crackers, not sweet ones. Unsalted saltines or matzo crackers crushed coarse give the same effect; toss them with a little melted butter so the layer browns rather than drying out.
- "Eggs and cracker" coatingThat is the standard dip-in-beaten-egg, press-in-crumbs breading. It fries crisper than the flour batter and is less prone to sogging.
- Frying fat and heatButter alone scorches before the slices cook; use lard, or butter cut with a neutral oil. Keep the fat at a steady medium-high and fry in batches, as crowding drops the temperature and the slices soak up grease.
- YieldOne medium eggplant, either way, will serve roughly three or four as a side dish; the recipe gives no yield.
Buckeye Cookery (which began as the Centennial Buckeye Cook Book, published in Marion, Ohio, in 1876, and was reissued in revised form as Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping in Minneapolis in 1877) belongs to the era when eggplant was still a slightly unfamiliar vegetable in American kitchens orm ggardeners near the eastern cities, but new enough in the Midwest that a compiler thought it worth saying which color to buy. The English name comes from the small white, egg-shaped varieties that reached northern Europe first; the plant itself is generally traced to South and Southeast Asia, and arrived in the Americas through both European and African channels. Frying salted slices in batter is among the most persistent American treatments, recorded in cookbooks from the early 1800s onward, and the second method here — boil, mash, top with cracker crumbs, bake — is a crumb-topped scalloped formula, a way of turning any soft vegetable into a dish that could hold in a warm oven until the family sat down.