The Eggplant, Aubergine or Brinjal (Solanum melongena) is a species of Solanum, native to southern India and Sri Lanka. It is an annual plant growing 0.4-1.5 m tall, often spiny, with large, coarsely lobed leaves 10-20 cm long and 5-10 cm broad. The flowers are white to purple, with a five-lobed corolla and yellow stamens. The fruit is a fleshy berry, 3 cm diameter on wild plants (much larger in cultivated forms), containing numerous small, soft seeds.
Cultivation and uses
It is an important food crop grown for its large pendulous purple or white fruit. It has been cultivated in southern and eastern Asia countries since prehistory, but appears to have become known to the Western world no more than about 1,500 years ago. The numerous Arabic and North African names for it, and the lack of ancient Greek and Roman names, indicate that it was carried into the Mediterranean area by the Arabs in the early Middle Ages. The scientific name melongena derives from a 16th-century Arabic name for one kind of eggplant.
The most widely grown cultivars in Europe and North America today are elongated ovoid, 12-25 cm long and 6-9 cm broad with a dark purple skin. A much wider range of shapes, sizes and colours are grown in India and elsewhere in Asia. There, cultivars that closely resembles a chicken egg in both size and shape are widely grown; colours vary from white to yellow as well as reddish-purple and dark purple. Some cultivars have a colour gradient, from white at the stem to bright purple to deep purple, or even black, but white cultivars also exist.
Chinese eggplant are commonly shaped like a narrower, slightly pendulous cucumber.
The name 'eggplant' dates to the 1700s, when the most common European cultivars of the fruit were white or yellow, and roughly the size and shape of a goose egg.
The raw fruit has a somewhat disagreeable taste, but when cooked, becomes tender and develops a rich, complex flavour and firm texture. Salting and then rinsing the sliced eggplant can also remove much of its bitterness. It is especially useful culinarily owing to its ability to absorb great amounts of cooking fats, making possible extraordinarily rich dishes. The fruit flesh is smooth; the numerous seeds are soft and (as in the related Tomato) edible along with the rest of the fruit.
Aubergine is the British name given to this fruit. This name comes from the French aubergine, derived from Catalan albergínia, from Arabic al-bAdhinjAn, from Persian بادنجان Bâdinjân, the eggplant.
Numerous other names are used, many derived from the Sanskrit vatinganah, which has produced a number of names for this plant in various languages: brinjal, badingan, melongena, melanzana, berenjena, albergínia, aubergine, brown-jolly, and mad-apple (misinterpretation of Italian melanzana as mela insana).