Eggplant

The eggplant plant is a bushy, often spiny tender perennial grown as an annual, with large lobed leaves and star-shaped purple flowers. The fruit is a berry that varies from glossy purple and long to round, white, green or striped, depending on variety. Inside the flesh sit many flat, rounded, pale yellow to light brown seeds, about 2 to 4 millimeters across, embedded in a spongy white pulp. In young fruit the seeds are soft and unobtrusive, but in overripe fruit they harden, darken and turn bitter. Seeds are collected from fully ripe, yellowed fruit for planting, then washed and dried. They are normally sold in seed packets for gardeners rather than for eating.

Solanum melongena was domesticated from wild relatives, most likely Solanum incanum and related species, in South or Southeast Asia, with India and Indochina commonly cited as centers of origin. Early cultivation is documented in China and India more than two thousand years ago. The English word eggplant refers to small, white, egg-shaped varieties grown in European gardens, while aubergine comes through French from Catalan and Arabic badinjan, which in turn goes back to Persian and Sanskrit forms. Brinjal in Indian and South African English comes from Portuguese bringella, itself derived from the same Arabic root.

Eggplant was cultivated across India and China by antiquity, with early Chinese agricultural writings describing it by around the fifth century. Arab traders carried it westward, and it reached Spain and the Mediterranean in the early Middle Ages, where it became a staple of Arab-influenced cooking in Andalusia, Sicily and the Levant. For centuries many Europeans distrusted it because it belongs to the nightshade family, and it was grown at first more as an ornamental curiosity than a food.

By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it had become established in Italian, Spanish and Turkish cuisines, and dishes such as parmigiana, moussaka, ratatouille and imam bayildi grew out of the tradition. Spanish and Portuguese explorers brought it to Africa and the Americas. In India it became one of the most widely grown vegetables, with thousands of local varieties, and the country remains a major producer along with China.

Seed saving has been an important part of this history: farmers and gardeners have long preserved seed from the best fruit, creating regional landraces adapted to local climate and taste. Small bitter wild or garden eggs in West Africa belong to related species and are eaten whole or with their seeds.

Eggplant seeds are eaten incidentally with the flesh in grilled, roasted, fried, stewed and curried dishes. Many cooks do not remove the seeds from young fruit, though some scoop them from large older fruit to reduce bitterness. The main use of seeds themselves is propagation: they are sown indoors in warm conditions and transplanted after frost. Research has examined eggplant seed oil, a by-product of processing, and the seeds have also been used in animal feed trials. Seeds are not usually roasted or eaten as a snack in the way pumpkin or sunflower seeds are.

Eggplant fruit provides fiber, potassium, manganese and phenolic antioxidants, especially anthocyanins in the skin of purple varieties. The seeds contribute small amounts of fiber and oil. Studies on eggplant extracts and cholesterol or blood pressure are mostly small or laboratory-based, and results are not conclusive. Eggplant is low in calories and works well in Mediterranean-style diets.