Eggplant

Eggplant, also known as aubergine, brinjal, or baigan depending on the region, is a plant grown worldwide for its edible fruit. It belongs to the nightshade family, Solanaceae, and is closely related to the tomato, chili pepper, and potato. The fruit is usually purple and is often used as a vegetable in many different cuisines.

Unlike many fruits, eggplants have a special ability to soak up oils and flavors when they are cooked, making them very versatile in cooking. They are low in nutrients but become very tasty when prepared in various ways. Eggplants were first domesticated from a wild nightshade species in both South Asia and East Asia.

Today, eggplants are grown all over the world. In 2023, the total production was about 61 million tonnes, with China and India producing most of them.

Description

The eggplant is a delicate plant that grows best in warm places. It is usually grown as a yearly plant in cooler areas. The plant can reach heights between 40 to 150 cm, with big leaves that are 10 to 20 cm long.

The flowers of the eggplant are white to purple. Though we call them vegetables, eggplants are actually a type of berry. Their seeds are small, soft, and can taste a little bitter. Many eggplants are purple and egg-shaped, with white flesh that feels soft and meaty. Some types are white and longer in shape. When cut open, the flesh of an eggplant turns brown quickly when it touches air.

The eggplant has 12 chromosomes in its genes.

Etymology and regional names

The eggplant has many names in English, depending on where you live. In North American English and Australian English, it is called "eggplant" because white varieties look like eggs. In British English and Irish English, it is called "aubergine", a name that comes from Arabic.

Other names include "brinjal", used in South Asia and South African English, and "baigan" in some Caribbean areas. All these names have interesting histories, traveling through many languages and cultures over time.

History

No one knows exactly where eggplants originally came from. Some believe they are native to South Asia, while others think they came from Africa. People have been growing eggplants in southern and eastern Asia since ancient times. The oldest known writing about eggplants is from China in 59 BCE by a poet named Wang Bao.

Eggplants were brought to Europe through the Iberian Peninsula. They became popular with Muslim and Jewish communities there. Many names for the vegetable in Arabic and North African languages show that Arabs grew them in the Mediterranean area during the early Middle Ages. They arrived in Spain in the 800s. A book from 12th-century Muslim Spain by Ibn Al-Awwam described how to grow them. Records of eggplants exist from later medieval times in Spain and Italy. They were not well-known in other parts of Europe until the 1600s.

Eggplants were not mentioned in England until the 1500s. An English book from 1597 talked about a plant called the "madde or raging Apple" that grew in Egypt. Europeans later brought eggplants to the Americas.

Because eggplants are related to other plants called nightshades, people once thought they were very poisonous. The flowers and leaves can be harmful if eaten in large amounts because they contain a substance called solanine.

Eggplants have an interesting place in stories and traditions. In old Italian stories from the 1200s, eggplants were thought to cause madness. In 19th-century Egypt, people believed madness happened more often when eggplants were in season during the summer.

Cultivars

Different types of eggplants grow fruits in many sizes, shapes, and colors, though they are usually purple. Some less common white types are called Easter white eggplants, garden eggs, Casper, or white eggplants. The most common types grown in Europe and North America today are long and oval-shaped, about 12–25 cm (4+1⁄2–10 in) long and 6–9 cm (2+1⁄2–3+1⁄2 in) wide, with dark purple skin.

In India and other parts of Asia, eggplants come in an even wider range of shapes, sizes, and colors. Some larger types can weigh up to a kilogram (2.2 pounds) and grow between the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers, while smaller ones are found in other areas. Colors range from white to yellow or green, and some even change color from white at the stem to bright pink, deep purple, or black. Green or purple eggplants with white stripes also exist. Chinese eggplants are often shaped like a narrow, slightly drooping cucumber, and Asian eggplants from Japan have their own special shapes.

Some popular types include:

• Oval or long oval-shaped and black-skinned types like 'Harris Special Hibush', 'Burpee Hybrid', 'Bringal Bloom', 'Black Magic', 'Classic', 'Dusky', and 'Black Beauty'.
• Slim types in purple-black skin like 'Little Fingers', 'Ichiban', 'Pingtung Long', and 'Tycoon'.
  • In green skin, there are 'Louisiana Long Green' and 'Thai (Long) Green'.
  • In white skin, there is 'Dourga'.
• Traditional, white-skinned, egg-shaped types like 'Casper' and 'Easter Egg'.
• Types with two colors, like 'Rosa Bianca', 'Violetta di Firenze', 'Bianca Sfumata di Rosa', and 'Prosperosa'.
• Types with stripes, like 'Listada de Gandia' and 'Udumalapet'.
• In parts of India, small types called baigan are popular.

Varieties

• S. m. var. esculentum – the common eggplant, including white varieties, with many types.
• S. m. var. depressum – a smaller eggplant.
• S. m. var. serpentium – a snake-shaped eggplant.

Genetically engineered eggplant

Bt brinjal is a special type of eggplant that has a gene from a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis. This helps the plant resist certain insects, such as the brinjal fruit and shoot borer and fruit borer.

In 2010, India stopped growing Bt brinjal after protests. However, Bangladesh approved it for growing in 2013.

Uses

Raw eggplant can have a bitter taste, but it becomes tender and flavorful when cooked. Rinsing, draining, and salting the sliced fruit before cooking can help remove the bitterness. Eggplant easily absorbs cooking fats and sauces, which can enhance its flavor.

Eggplant is used in the cuisines of many countries. Because of its texture and bulk, it is sometimes used as a meat substitute in vegan and vegetarian cooking. The flesh of eggplant is smooth, and its small, soft seeds are edible, so they do not need to be removed. The thin skin is also edible and does not need to be peeled. However, the green part at the top, called the calyx, should be removed before cooking.

Eggplant can be prepared in many ways, such as steaming, stir-frying, pan-frying, deep-frying, barbecuing, roasting, stewing, currying, or pickling. Many eggplant dishes are made by mashing the cooked fruit into sauces. It can also be stuffed. It is often cooked with oil or fat, but not always.

Culinary

Korean and Japanese eggplant varieties are usually thin-skinned.

In Chinese cuisine, eggplants are known as qiézi. They are often deep-fried and made into dishes such as yúxiāng-qiézi ("fish fragrance eggplant") or di sān xiān ("three earthen treasures"). In Yunnan cuisine, particularly among the Dai people, eggplants are barbecued or roasted, then split and eaten directly with garlic, chili, oil, and coriander, or the flesh is removed and pounded into a mash before being eaten with rice or other dishes.

In Japanese cuisine, eggplants are known as nasu or nasubi. An example of its use is in the dish hasamiyaki, where slices of eggplant are grilled and filled with a meat stuffing. Eggplant also appears in several Japanese expressions and proverbs.

In Korean cuisine, eggplants are known as gaji. They are steamed, stir-fried, or pan-fried and eaten as side dishes, such as namul, bokkeum, and jeon.

In the Philippines, eggplants are of the long and slender purple variety and are known as talong. They are widely used in stews and soups, like pinakbet. The most popular eggplant dish is tortang talong, an omelette made from grilling an eggplant, dipping it into beaten eggs, and pan-frying the mixture. This dish is typically served with the stalk attached and has several variants, including rellenong talong, which is stuffed with meat and vegetables. Eggplant can also be grilled, skinned, and eaten as a salad called ensaladang talong. Another popular dish is adobong talong, which is diced eggplant prepared with vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic as an adobo.

Eggplant is widely used in India, for example in sambar (a tamarind lentil stew), dalma (a dal preparation with vegetables), chutney, curry (such as vankai), and achaar (a pickled dish). It is often described as the "king of vegetables" due to its versatile nature and wide use in both everyday and festive Indian food. Roasted, skinned, mashed, mixed with onions, tomatoes, and spices, and then slow-cooked gives the South Asian dish baingan bharta or gojju, similar to salată de vinete in Romania. Another version of the dish, begun-pora (eggplant charred or burnt), is very popular in east Indian states of Odisha and West Bengal as well as Bangladesh. In a dish from Maharashtra called bharli vangi, small eggplants are stuffed with ground coconut, peanuts, onions, tamarind, jaggery, and spices, and then cooked in oil. Maharashtra and the adjacent state of Karnataka also have an eggplant-based vegetarian pilaf called vangi bhat.

Eggplant is often stewed, as in the French ratatouille, or deep-fried as in the Italian parmigiana di melanzane, the Turkish karnıyarık, or Turkish, Greek, and Levantine musakka/moussaka, and Middle Eastern and South Asian dishes. Eggplants can also be battered before deep-frying and served with a sauce made of tahini and tamarind. In Iranian cuisine, it is blended with whey as kashk e bademjan, tomatoes as mirza ghassemi, or made into stew as khoresht-e-bademjan. It can be sliced and deep-fried, then served with plain yogurt, optionally topped with a tomato and garlic sauce, as in the Turkish dish patlıcan kızartması, or without yogurt, as in patlıcan şakşuka. Well-known Turkish eggplant dishes include imam bayıldı (vegetarian) and karnıyarık (with minced meat). It may also be roasted in its skin until charred, so the pulp can be removed and blended with other ingredients, such as lemon, tahini, and garlic, as in the Levantine baba ghanoush, Greek melitzanosalata, Moroccan zaalouk, and Romanian salată de vinete. A mix of roasted eggplant, roasted red peppers, chopped onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, carrots, celery, and spices is called zacuscă in Romania, and ajvar or pinjur in the Balkans.

A Spanish dish called escalivada in Catalonia calls for strips of roasted aubergine, sweet pepper, onion, and tomato. In Andalusia, eggplant is mostly cooked thinly sliced, deep-fried in olive oil, and served hot with honey (berenjenas a la Cordobesa). In the La Mancha region of central Spain, a small eggplant is pickled in vinegar, paprika, olive oil, and red peppers, resulting in berenjena of Almagro, Ciudad Real.

In the Eastern Mediterranean (including the Balkans), eggplant is prepared as dolma, hollowed out and stuffed with meat, rice, or other fillings, and then baked or braised. A Levantine specialty is makdous, another pickling of eggplants, stuffed with red peppers and walnuts in olive oil. In Georgia, eggplant is fried and stuffed with walnut paste to make nigvziani badrijani.

In medieval Spain, eggplant, along with ingredients such as Swiss chard and chickpeas, was closely associated with Jewish cuisine. The Kitāb al-Ṭabikh, a 13th-century Andalusian cookbook, features eggplant as the main ingredient in fifteen out of its nineteen vegetable dishes, indicating its significance in the local cuisine at the time. Jewish communities in Spain prepared eggplant in various ways, including in dishes like almodrote, a casserole of eggplant and cheese. This dish and others became identifiers for Jews during their expulsion from Spain and the Inquisition, and they were carried by the expelled Jews to their new homes in the Ottoman Empire. The classic Judaeo-Spanish song "Siete modos de gizar la berendgena" lists various methods of preparing eggplant that persisted among Jews in the Ottoman Empire. Today, eggplant remains a defining ingredient of Sephardic Jewish cuisine.

In Iranian cuisine, eggplant (called bādenjān or bādemjān in Persian) can be used in both appetizers and main courses. It can also be pickled in vinegar. The ideal eggplant in Iranian cuisine is long, straight, firm, and black. In Iran, unlike places like Greece, Turkey, and North Africa, eggplant is cooked peeled and usually seasoned with cinnamon or especially turmeric. Most eggplant dishes are classified as nankhoreshi (eaten with bread), and they are commonly served as snacks alongside alcoholic beverages.

The 14th-century poet Boshaq At'ema refers to an early eggplant dish called burani-e badenjan: chopped eggplant sautéed with onions and turmeric, then slowly cooked, and finally mixed with yogurt. The combination of eggplant and kashk (condensed whey) is popular in Iranian cuisine; it is found in dishes like kashk o badenjan as well as ash-e kashk o badenjan (involving layers of sautéed eggplant, grilled onions, and red beans topped by kashk seasoned with turmeric). Another eggplant dish is mast o badenjan, also known as nazkhatun in Tehran, which involves eggplant, yogurt, and dried mint. Eggplant can also be cooked in stews (khoresh-es), either with lamb (khoresh-e badenjan) or with chicken and either unripe grapes or pomegranate juice (mosamma-ye badenjan). Variants of ab-gusht, eshkana, fesenjan, and kuku also make use of eggplant. Some regional dishes involving eggplant include badenjan-polow, a dish mainly from Fars and Kerman that combines white rice with a paste of chopped sautéed eggplant, chopped meat, and spices; as well as the northern Iranian badenjan-e qasemi, a casserole using grilled eggplant, garlic, tomatoes, and eggs.

Eggplants are traditionally among the foods that get preserved and stored for winter in Iran. They are selected in the last month of summer, when they are most readily available, then peeled, and finally preserved in one of two ways. In the first way, the peeled eggplants are cut, salted, and left to "sweat" (to make them less bilious); then they are sun-dried by hanging them on a line. The dried eggplants are then rehydrated 24 hours before being cooked. In the second way, the peeled eggplants are cooked in oil, put in a copper pot, and finally covered with plenty of hot oil, "which congeals to seal them".

Medieval Iranian writers such as al-Razi and al-Biruni cautioned that eggplant contains harmful qualities, and it must be ripe and cooked before eating to neutralize them. They wrote that it could cause heat and dryness and an excess of black bile, contributing to a wide range of health problems. If the "salt" in it was removed, or it was cooked in oil or vinegar, then they wrote that eggplant gained healthy attributes. Present-day Iranian attitudes to the eggplant reflect this medical tradition's influence: the eggplant is "considered rather dangerous... a cook in Tehran will say that the poison must be taken out". People also use eggplant seeds as an expectorant to relieve asthma and catarrh.

Nutrition

Raw eggplant is mostly water, with a small amount of carbohydrates, a tiny bit of protein, and almost no fat. It has some essential nutrients, but only manganese is found in a noticeable amount. The nutrients in eggplant can change a little depending on the season, where it is grown, and its type.

Cultivation and pests

Eggplants grow well in tropical and subtropical climates. In temperate areas, it's best to plant them after the last frost. They love hot weather and won't do well in cold or dry places. Seeds are usually planted about eight to 10 weeks before the first frost-free day.

Plants need space—about 45 to 60 cm between each one and 60 to 90 cm between rows. Mulching helps keep the soil moist and stop weeds. Giving the plants some shade during the hottest part of the day also helps. Flowers usually have both parts needed for pollination and can sometimes pollinate themselves or need help from other plants.

Eggplants share many problems with other plants like tomatoes and potatoes. It's best not to plant them where these plants grew before. Because eggplants can attract pests like whiteflies, they're sometimes grown with chili pepper plants to help catch the pests. It's a good idea to wait four years before planting eggplants in the same spot again.

Common pests in North America include potato beetles, flea beetles, aphids, whiteflies, and spider mites. Keeping the area clean and rotating crops each year helps prevent diseases, especially a serious one called Verticillium.

A pest called the potato tuber moth likes to feed on eggplants. These moths lay eggs on the leaves, and the babies eat the leaves. Some diseases in South Asia, caused by Phytoplasmas, make the plants' leaves very small. These diseases are spread by a type of leafhopper called Hishimonus phycitis.

Production

In 2023, the world produced 61 million tonnes of eggplants. China led with 64% of the production, and India followed with 21% of the total.

Chemistry

The purple color of some eggplant skins comes from a special plant material called anthocyanin. When eggplant flesh turns brown, it is because certain natural materials inside it, like chlorogenic acid, react with air. This process is called oxidation.

Allergies

Some people can feel itchy or have a mild headache or stomach upset after eating or touching eggplant. This can happen because eggplant might cause allergic reactions in certain people.

Studies show that around 10% of people in places where eggplant is often eaten, like India, have had some allergic symptoms after eating it. People who are more likely to have allergies may react to eggplant because it contains natural substances that can affect the body. Cooking the eggplant well might help prevent some reactions, but not all.

Taxonomy

The eggplant has been known by many different names in science. Some older names you might see in books include S. ovigerum and S. trongum. Other names like Melongena ovata and Solanum album were used but are no longer considered correct.

Scientists have also named many subgroups and types of eggplant, but most of these names refer to different groups of eggplants rather than true subspecies. Sometimes, other plants that look similar to eggplants were also mistakenly called eggplants, but they are actually different species.

Culture

Vegetable orchestras, such as the London Vegetable Orchestra, use vegetables to make music. They use zucchini as trumpets, butternut squash as trombones, pumpkin as drums, and eggplant as castanets. Other vegetables played include carrots, bell peppers, potatoes, and parsnips.

In Jainism, eating eggplant, also called brinjal in some places, is not allowed. This is because of the religion's strong belief in nonviolence. Eggplants have a lot of tiny living things inside, so eating them is thought to hurt many small lives.