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Stuffed Eggplant with Anchovies
Cut in two lengthwise three small, very sound, fresh eggplants. Criss-cross the meat of the plant without spoiling the skin, then plunge in boiling fat, cut side downward, and fry ten minutes. Remove and place on a cloth, cut side downward, and drain ten minutes. Scoop out meat from them, remove the seed and chop the meat very fine.
Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a saucepan, add one finely chopped onion, lightly brown five minutes, then add the chopped eggplant, twelve small anchovies cut in small pieces, half bean chopped garlic, half teaspoon finely chopped parsley, half teaspoon chopped chervil, half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper. Sharply stir and then cook ten minutes, stirring meanwhile; add six tablespoons bread crumbs and two egg yolks; mix well and cook five minutes more. Then with this preparation fill the six half shells. Smooth the surface, sprinkle a little bread crumbs over, place a few little bits butter on top of each, place on a tin, then set in oven fifteen minutes. Remove, dress on a hot dish and serve.
A French-trained treatment of eggplant that fries the halves before hollowing them, which cooks the flesh and firms the skins into serving shells in one step. A few of the measures need translating and the seasoning needs restraint.
- Fry the shells properlyThe ten minutes cut side down in hot fat is the hinge of the dish: it collapses the scored flesh so it scoops out cleanly and leaves a skin sturdy enough to hold the filling. Skimp on it and the halves tear when you scoop.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is usually reckoned a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons is about three-quarters of a teaspoon of pepper for three small eggplants. That is aggressive by current taste; a quarter to half teaspoon is closer to modern palates.
- "Half bean chopped garlic"An old way of naming a clove of garlic rather than a weight. Half a small clove, finely chopped, is the intent.
- The anchoviesTwelve small anchovies probably means whole salted fish, rinsed and filleted, which would give roughly twenty-four fillets. With modern oil-packed tinned fillets, eight to ten is plenty, and you should hold back the half teaspoon of salt until you have tasted the mixture.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh. Use a little more parsley with a pinch of tarragon, which gets close to chervil's faint anise note, or leave it out rather than substitute dried.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was usual in books of this period. Fifteen minutes at 400F browns the crumbs and heats the filling through; the components are already cooked.
- Draining the fatBoth shells and scooped flesh hold frying fat. Press the flesh in a sieve before chopping, or the filling will be greasy once the butter and yolks go in.
- YieldSix filled halves: three servings as a main course with a salad, six as a first course. The filling can be made a day ahead and the shells filled and baked at the last minute.
The International Cook Book belongs to the era when American hotel and restaurant cookery was shaped by men trained in French kitchens, and this eggplant shows it: the onion base, the chervil, the egg-yolk binding and the crumbed gratin surface are all familiar professional practice of the period. Eggplant reached Europe by way of the Arab Mediterranean and was long established in Italian, Provençal and other southern cooking; stuffed halves under the name aubergines farcies appear in nineteenth-century French repertoires. The anchovy here supplies salt and savour without announcing itself as fish, which points to the southern French and Italian coast rather than to Paris.