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Stewed Eggplant with Onions
Take an eggplant, cut it into thin slices lengthwise, dust them over with salt and let them remain until the bitter juice is extracted; then drain and put them in a fryingpan with olive oil or butter, and brown over a brisk fire. Take them out of the pan and lay them at the bottom of a baking-dish. Peel four medium-sized onions, cut them in slices and put them in the fryingpan, adding more olive oil or butter if required, and fry until browned. Lay the onions over the eggplant, season with salt and three teaspoonfuls of sugar, pour in one teacupful of water and half that quantity of vinegar, and set the pan over a slow fire. When the moisture is nearly all absorbed, arrange the eggplant and onions on a hot dish, and serve.
A sweet-sour braise of fried eggplant and onions, closer to a Sicilian caponata or an agrodolce side than to anything creamed or cheesed. The whole dish turns on the initial salting and the slow reduction at the end.
- Salt the slices properlyHalf an hour with a good dusting of salt draws out enough liquid; an hour is better for a large late-season eggplant. Blot the slices dry before they meet hot oil or they will spit and steam rather than brown.
- Teacupful and "half that quantity"A teacupful in this period is not fixed, running somewhere between about 4 and 6 fl oz, so figure roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup of water and half that again, about 1/4 to 1/3 cup, of vinegar. Cider or white wine vinegar suits it better than distilled white vinegar at modern strength.
- Three teaspoonfuls of sugarThat is one tablespoon against something like a third of a cup of vinegar, which still lands distinctly sour. Taste as it reduces and add sugar in small increments if you want it nearer a caponata balance.
- The baking-dish is only a holding dishNothing goes in the oven here. The eggplant is parked in the dish while the onions fry, then everything finishes over direct low heat, so use a wide pan or shallow braiser you can put back on the burner.
- "Brisk fire" and "slow fire"Brisk means high heat for the frying, hot enough to colour the slices in a couple of minutes a side. Slow means a bare simmer for the reduction, uncovered, until the moisture is nearly all absorbed as the recipe directs; allow a good twenty minutes or more.
- Oil quantityEggplant absorbs a great deal, and the recipe simply says to add more if required. Expect to use 1/3 to 1/2 cup of olive oil across both stages; brushing the slices and browning in batches uses less than pooling oil in the pan.
- YieldOne medium eggplant and four onions serves four as a side dish. It is better at room temperature the next day, once the vinegar has settled into the vegetables.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection is a large compilation, and it is notably cosmopolitan for an American hotel book of the period, carrying French, German, Italian and Creole dishes side by side. This one is an agrodolce in all but name: fried eggplant and onions finished with sugar and vinegar is the backbone of Sicilian caponata. Eggplant itself was still faintly exotic in the United States then, more often met in Southern and Creole kitchens than Northern ones, and the instruction to salt out the "bitter juice" reflects older, seedier varieties; modern cultivars are bred far less bitter, though salting still improves the texture.