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Fried Egg-Plant (Pare an egg-plant cut it into)
Pare an egg-plant, cut it into slices a sixteenth of an inch thick. Beat an egg lightly, add to it a tablespoonful of hot water. Dip each slice first into the egg, then into bread crumbs. Put three tablespoonfuls of lard or dripping into a frying pan; when hot cover the bottom with slices of egg-plant. Fry brown on one side, then turn and fry brown on the other; a few slices only should be cooked at a time. As the fat is consumed add more, waiting each time for it to re-heat before putting in the egg-plant. Drain the egg-plant on brown paper and serve very hot with tomato catsup.
A straightforward pan-fry that depends almost entirely on how thin you cut the slices and how hot the fat is. Two details in the original are worth translating before you start.
- A sixteenth of an inchThat is thinner than most cooks will manage with a knife — roughly 1.5 mm, mandoline territory. Slices at 1/4 inch (6 mm) fry perfectly well; they simply need a little longer over slightly lower heat so the interior collapses to creaminess before the crumbs darken.
- Salting, or notThe recipe skips it, and for a modern eggplant it can usually be skipped: commercial varieties are bred away from the old bitterness. Salting sliced eggplant for 30 minutes and blotting it dry still helps, though, because it collapses the spongy cells and the slices absorb noticeably less fat.
- Lard or drippingDripping is rendered fat saved from roasting meat, usually beef. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works; three tablespoons is only a thin film in a 10-inch skillet, which is shallow frying rather than deep frying — hence the instruction to top it up between batches.
- Waiting for the fat to reheatThis is the hinge of the recipe. Eggplant is a sponge, and slices laid into fat that has cooled will drink it and turn greasy rather than crisp. Add oil, let it shimmer again, then add the next batch.
- Egg washOne egg with a tablespoon of hot water is a thin wash that clings without gumming up the crumbs. Expect to need two eggs for a large eggplant.
- Brown paperGrocery bags and butcher paper were the period's draining surface. Paper towels or a wire rack over a sheet pan do the same job; a rack keeps the underside from steaming soft.
- YieldOne medium eggplant gives four modest side servings. Fried eggplant does not hold — serve it as it comes out of the pan.
- Tomato catsupThe nineteenth-century condiment was thinner and sharper than modern bottled ketchup, closer to a spiced tomato sauce. A plain tomato sauce or a squeeze of lemon suits the dish better than today's sweeter product.
Eggplant reached American kitchens by way of the South, where it was grown well before it appeared regularly in Northern markets, and nineteenth-century cookbooks often treated it as a curiosity needing explanation. Frying in crumbs seems to have been a common American approach — the vegetable's blandness and spongy texture take kindly to a crisp coat and a fat that carries flavor. The instruction to salt is often said to have been usual in the period because older varieties genuinely were bitter, which may make its absence here worth remarking. The tomato catsup finish places the recipe firmly in its era: catsup was the household's all-purpose bottled sauce, poured over fried and broiled things much as it still is over potatoes.