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Fried Eggplant
Peel a nice, firm, medium-sized eggplant. Cut it into twelve equal slices. Season them all over with one teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; turn in a little flour, lightly dip in a beaten egg and, lastly, roll gently in bread crumbs. Plunge into boiling fat and fry for five minutes. Drain well, sprinkle just a little salt over, dress on a hot dish and serve.
A straightforward breaded fry that works as written; the only real variables are fat temperature and how much moisture you leave in the slices.
- Fat temperature"Boiling fat" means deep fat at roughly 350-365F, not literally boiling. Below that the breadcrumbs absorb oil and the coating slides off; above it the crust colours before the flesh softens.
- Slice thicknessTwelve slices from a medium eggplant gives rounds of roughly 1/2 inch, depending on how the fruit is cut. Thinner slices cook through faster than five minutes, so judge by colour rather than following the clock.
- Salting firstThe recipe seasons and breads immediately. Modern eggplant is bred with far less bitterness, but salting the slices for 20-30 minutes and blotting them dry still gives a firmer, less oil-soaked result.
- The breading orderFlour, then egg, then crumbs, and each stage must be thin. Wet slices will not hold flour, which is the layer the egg needs to grip.
- White pepperUsually chosen in dishes like this so the pale flesh is not flecked with black. Black pepper substitutes freely, though the flavour is not quite the same.
- Fat choiceA period kitchen would most likely have used lard or beef drippings. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point behaves the same; unrefined olive oil is a poor choice at this temperature.
- DrainingDrain on a rack rather than piled on paper, and salt at once while the surface is still hot enough to take it. Stacked slices steam and the crust goes limp within a minute or two.
- YieldTwelve slices serves three or four as a side dish. Fry in batches; crowding the pan drops the fat temperature sharply.
Eggplant reached European kitchens through the Arab Mediterranean and was long treated with suspicion in the north — it belongs to the nightshade family, and English writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries repeated warnings about it that had little to do with cooking. By the time this book was compiled, breaded and deep-fried vegetables were standard restaurant technique, and eggplant prepared this way appears in Italian, French and American cookery alike under names from melanzane fritte to plain fried eggplant.