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Stuffed Eggplant, Provencale
Cut into even halves three very small, sound eggplants. Make a few incisions inside each piece without disturbing the peels; then gently drop them into boiling fat-inside parts downward-and fry for eight minutes. Remove them with a skimmer, and let drain on a towel for ten minutes again with cut parts downward. Then with a teaspoon scoop out all the meat and mince it fine. Chop very finely six medium-sized sound shallots, and fry them in a frying pan with half teaspoon butter for one minute, then add the scooped-out chopped meat, with a tablespoon finely chopped parsley, two tablespoons chopped canned mushrooms, half clove sound, finely crushed garlic. Season with one teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper; adding also half ounce fresh bread crumbs, one gill tomato sauce and one whole raw egg. Thoroughly mix with a wooden spoon until well thickened. Then fill the six eggplant shells with the force meat. Arrange on a baking dish; spread over each a small quantity bread crumbs, with a few very little bits of butter on top, then set to bake in a brisk oven for fifteen minutes. Remove, dress on a hot dish and serve.
A straightforward stuffed eggplant, but written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen around 1900 — quantities by the gill and ounce, ovens by adjective. A few notes before you start.
- The hinge: fry cut-side down, then drain cut-side downThe flesh is cooked and collapsed by the fat while the skin stays firm enough to hold its shape as a shell. Ten minutes draining face-down lets the absorbed oil run back out; skip it and the filling turns greasy.
- "Brisk oven"Roughly 400-425F. The filling is largely cooked already, so the fifteen minutes mainly sets the egg and browns the crumb topping.
- A gillHalf a cup. One gill of tomato sauce goes into the forcemeat, and it should be a thick sauce rather than a thin passata or the mixture will not thicken as described.
- "Sound"Used repeatedly here to mean unblemished and unspoiled — sound eggplants, sound shallots, a sound clove of garlic. It is a marketing instruction, not a variety.
- Half an ounce of bread crumbsRoughly a quarter cup of fresh crumbs. Fresh, not dried: they absorb the tomato sauce and eggplant liquid without turning the filling sandy.
- Six shallotsAs written, but modern shallots vary enormously in size, so judge by bulk rather than count. One minute in butter softens them without colour, which is what the dish wants.
- Canned mushroomsCommon in cookbooks of this period and perfectly usable, though sauteed fresh mushrooms give more flavour. Drain them well either way -- extra liquid loosens the forcemeat.
- SaltA full teaspoon for six small halves is on the heavy side by current taste, particularly if your tomato sauce is already seasoned. Add half, taste the mixture before the raw egg goes in, and adjust.
- YieldSix halves from three very small eggplants: a first course for six, or a light main for three.
The Provençale label in a book of this vintage signals the trio of garlic, tomato and olive oil rather than any single village dish, and stuffed eggplant halves — aubergines farcies — are among the oldest of that repertoire, the flesh scooped out, chopped with aromatics and returned to its own skin. The technique reached French cooking through the Mediterranean south, where eggplant is generally thought to have been established via Arab and Italian routes; French cookbooks are often said to have still treated it as a regional specialty well into the nineteenth century. What marks this particular version as a professional one is the deep-frying: a hotel kitchen with a fat kettle already hot could soften six shells in eight minutes. The canned mushrooms and the pre-made tomato sauce point the same way — this is a dish written for a kitchen with a stocked larder, which is exactly the audience The International Cook Book was addressing.