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Eggplant, Turque
Cut in two lengthwise three small sound eggplants, crisscross the meat inside, without cutting skin, then fry in boiling fat, cut side down, twelve minutes; lift up, lay on a cloth, cut side down, and let drain for ten minutes. With a teaspoon scoop out the meat, leaving the shells intact. Finley chop meat and keep on a plate. Heat two tablespoons oil in a saucepan, add one finely chopped white onion and gently brown five minutes, then add two ounces raw rice with half bean finely chopped garlic; lightly brown five minutes, stirring once in a while. Add egg-plant meat with two gills tomato sauce, half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper and saltspoon nutmeg; mix well, cover pan, set in oven forty-five minutes. Remove, add two egg yolks, thoroughly mix, sprinkle half teaspoon salt in the eggplant shells, then fill with the preparation. Sprinkle a little bread crumbs over, place on a tin, arrange a few bits butter over each, set in oven fifteen minutes. Remove, dress on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A Turkish-style stuffed eggplant written in Edwardian hotel shorthand: no oven temperature, no yield, and units that have since fallen out of use. The essential thing is that the rice cooks entirely inside the covered pan with the tomato sauce, so the liquid measure and the lid matter more than anything else.
- The hinge: the covered panThe 45 minutes in the oven is how the raw rice cooks, absorbing the tomato sauce and eggplant liquid. Keep the pan tightly covered and use a lidded ovenproof saucepan or Dutch oven; if it dries out before the rice is tender, add a few spoonfuls of water rather than shortening the time.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of tomato sauce is one cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making the seasoning three-quarters teaspoon pepper and a quarter teaspoon nutmeg for the filling.
- "Half bean" of garlicPeriod American cookbooks, particularly those out of hotel kitchens, sometimes call a garlic clove a bean; read this as half a clove, finely chopped.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none; it says only "set in oven." A moderate 350F is a reasonable modern working temperature for both the covered 45-minute stage and the final 15 minutes to set the crumbs; if the tops are pale at the end, finish briefly under the broiler.
- Rice by weightTwo ounces of raw rice is a scant third of a cup. Use a long-grain white rice; parboiled or converted rice behaves differently in a closed pan and quick-cooking rice will turn to paste over 45 minutes.
- Frying the halvesThe recipe says only "boiling fat." Twelve minutes cut side down in deep fat softens the flesh so it scoops cleanly. Eggplant drinks oil, hence the ten minutes draining cut side down; that step is not optional if the finished dish is not to be greasy.
- The egg yolksStir the two yolks into the filling once it has come off the heat and stopped steaming hard, or they will scramble in streaks. They bind the stuffing so it slices, and they finish cooking in the last 15 minutes.
- Yield and serviceThree eggplants give six halves, which would serve three as a main course or six as a first course. The folded napkin was the standard presentation for dishes of this kind and would also take up any oil; a warmed shallow dish does the same job.
Stuffed eggplant dressed "à la Turque" was standard French menu language for anything read as Turkish or broadly Levantine, and the dish behind the label belongs to the Ottoman family of split, fried and filled eggplants that includes karnıyarık and the meatless imam bayıldı. What distinguishes this version is the rice cooked inside the filling rather than a meat stuffing, and the two egg yolks stirred in at the end, a French binding habit applied to a Turkish idea. Books of this kind, compiled from professional hotel and restaurant kitchens around 1900, were assembling a world menu for American households, and the tomato sauce called for is assumed to be already on hand, as it would have been in a working kitchen.