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Egg-Plant in Batter
Prepare the egg-plant, cut into slices about a quarter of an inch thick, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Make a batter precisely the same as for cucumbers in batter; dip the egg-plant in the batter and fry the same as for fried eggplant.
A two-line recipe that assumes you have already read two others in the same chapter. The gaps are the batter and the frying, both of which the original leaves to neighbouring pages.
- The missing batterThe original sends you to its cucumber-in-batter recipe, which is not on this page. A workable substitute is roughly 1 cup flour, 1 egg, and enough milk or water to make a coating the thickness of heavy cream, with a pinch of salt. It should cling to a slice without running off in sheets.
- Salt first, then waitSalt first -- The recipe salts and peppers the slices as seasoning and goes straight on. If you want to draw out moisture as well, lay the salted slices on a rack for 20 to 30 minutes and blot dry before dipping, so the batter adheres.
- Dry surface, or no batterWet eggplant sheds batter in the pan. Pat each slice thoroughly before dipping, and let the dipped slice drip for a second before it goes in.
- Frying temperatureThe original simply refers you to its fried egg-plant recipe, which is not on this page, so neither the depth of fat nor the heat is stated here. By modern practice, fat hot enough to set the batter on contact, around 365-375F, works: below that the slices absorb fat; above it the crust browns before the flesh softens.
- Quarter-inch is deliberateQuarter-inch slices -- Thicker slices tend to brown outside and stay spongy within. Keep to the stated thickness and cook two to three minutes a side.
- PeelingThe recipe says only 'prepare the egg-plant' and does not specify peeling. Peeling is optional; the skin does help the rounds hold together.
- YieldOne medium globe eggplant, sliced this thin, gives upwards of a dozen and a half slices, enough for three or four as a side dish. Serve straight from the pan; the crust softens as it stands.
Eggplant, Solanum melongena, reached American kitchens by way of Europe from South and Southeast Asia, and the English name comes from the small white egg-shaped cultivars that were more familiar to early growers than the large purple globes. It sat uneasily in American cooking for much of the nineteenth century, partly because of what is often said to have been a long-standing suspicion of nightshades and partly because badly handled specimens really are bitter; salting was the standard remedy. That a book of this era gives it several consecutive entries -- fried, in batter -- shows it had become respectable kitchen-garden produce rather than a curiosity, and the batter treatment is the same one applied to other watery vegetables that needed a crust to give them character.