Solanum melongena is a plant species in the nightshade family Solanaceae, grown worldwide for its edible fruit, typically used as a vegetable in cooking. It is known by a number of names, including eggplant, aubergine, and brinjal.
Most commonly purple, the spongy, absorbent fruit is used in several cuisines. It is a berry by botanical definition. As a member of the genus Solanum, it is related to the tomato, chili pepper, and potato, although those are of the Americas region while the eggplant is of the Eurasia region. Like the tomato, its skin and seeds can be eaten, but it is usually eaten cooked. Eggplant is nutritionally low in macronutrient and micronutrient content, but the capability of the fruit to absorb oils and flavors into its flesh through cooking expands its use in the culinary arts.
It was originally domesticated from the wild nightshade species thorn or bitter apple, S. incanum,Tsao and Lo in "Vegetables: Types and Biology". Handbook of Food Science, Technology, and Engineering by Yiu H. Hui (2006). CRC Press. .Doijode, S. D. (2001). Seed storage of horticultural crops (pp 157). Haworth Press: probably with two independent domestications: one in South Asia, and one in East Asia. In 2023, world production of eggplants was , with China and India combining for 85% of the total.
Description The eggplant is a delicate, tropical perennial plant often cultivated as a tender or half-hardy annual in temperate climates. The stem is often spiny. It grows tall, with large, coarsely lobed leaves that are long and broad. Semiwild types can grow much larger, to , with large leaves over long and broad.
The flowers are white to purple in color, with a five-lobed corolla and yellow stamens.
Botanically classified as a berry, the fruit contains numerous small, soft, edible seeds that taste bitter because they contain or are covered in nicotinoid alkaloids, like the related tobacco. Some common cultivars have fruit that is egg-shaped, glossy, and purple with white flesh and a spongy, "meaty" texture. Some other cultivars are white and longer in shape. Wild eggplant fruits measure less than in diameter. The fruit flesh rapidly turns brown when in contact with the oxygen in the air.
Genetics The eggplant genome has 12 chromosomes.
Etymology and regional names
The plant and fruit have a profusion of English names.
Eggplant-type names The name eggplant is usual in North American English, Australian English, and First recorded in 1763, the word "eggplant" was originally applied to white cultivars, which look very much like hen's eggs (see image)."'egg-plant, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, July 2018. Accessed 23 September 2018. Similar names are widespread in other languages, such as the Icelandic term or the Welsh .
The white, egg-shaped varieties of the eggplant's fruits are also known as garden eggs,'Eggplant (Garden Egg) ', in National Research Council of the National Academies, Lost Crops of Africa, Volume II: Vegetables (Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2006), pp. 136–53. , . a term first attested in 1811.'Garden egg', in "garden, n." OED, 3rd edn (2017). The Oxford English Dictionary records that between 1797 and 1888, the name vegetable egg was also used.'Vegetable egg, n.', OED, 3rd edn (2012).
Aubergine-type names Whereas eggplant was coined in some variations of English, any other European names for the plant derive from the Arabic ( , ).Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition, 2001, s.v. 'melongena, n.'; 2000, s.v. 'melongene, n."; and 2000, s.v. 'mad-apple, n.'. These partly supersede the etymology in the 1st edition, 1888, s.v. 'brinjal'. This in turn supersedes the 1885 etymology s.v. 'aubergine'. is itself a loan-word in Arabic, whose earliest traceable origins lie in the Dravidian languages. The Hobson-Jobson dictionary comments that "probably there is no word of the kind which has undergone such extraordinary variety of modifications, whilst retaining the same meaning, as this".Henry Yule, A.C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: The Anglo-Indian Dictionary, 1886, reprint , p. 115, s.v. 'brinjaul'
In English usage, modern names deriving from Arabic include:
Aubergine, usual in British English, Irish English, and New Zealand English (as well as German, French and Dutch) Brinjal or brinjaul, usual in Indian English and South African English, as well as Pakistani, It is stated on page 21 (PDF p. 7/18) that "brinjal" is a Pakistani English word. Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Singaporean, and Malaysian English Solanum melongena, the Linnaean name Caribbean English baigan or melongene
From Dravidian to Arabic
All the aubergine-type names have the same origin, in the Dravidian languages. Modern descendants of this ancient Dravidian word include Malayalam and Tamil .
The Dravidian word was borrowed into the Indo-Aryan languages, giving ancient forms such as Sanskrit and Pali (alongside Sanskrit ) and Prakrit . According to the entry brinjal in the Oxford English Dictionary, the Sanskrit word denoted 'the class (that removes) the wind-disorder (windy humour)': that is, it came to be the name for eggplants because they were thought to cure flatulence. The modern Hindustani word descending directly from the Sanskrit name is .Oxford English Dictionary, 1st edition, 1888, s.v. 'brinjal'.
The Indic word was then borrowed into Persian as , which was borrowed in turn into Arabic as (or, with the definite article, ). From Arabic, the word was borrowed into European languages.
From Arabic into Iberia and beyond In al-Andalus, the Arabic word was borrowed into the Romance languages in forms beginning with b- or, with the definite article included, alb-: Portuguese , , Spanish ,
The Spanish word was then borrowed into French, giving (along with French dialectal forms like , , , and ). The French name was then borrowed into British English, appearing there first in the late eighteenth century.
Through the colonial expansion of Portugal, the Portuguese form was borrowed into a variety of other languages: Indian, Malaysian, Singaporean and South African English brinjal, brinjaul (first attested in the seventeenth century) West Indian English brinjalle and (through folk-etymology) brown-jolly French in La Réunion
Thus although Indian English brinjal ultimately originates in languages of the Indian subcontinent, it actually came into Indian English via Portuguese.
From Arabic into Greek and beyond
The Arabic word was borrowed into Greek by the eleventh century CE. The Greek loans took a variety of forms, but crucially they began with m-, partly because Greek lacked the initial b- sound and partly through folk-etymological association with the Greek word (), . Attested Greek forms include (, eleventh-century), (, fourteenth-century), and (, seventeenth-century).
From Greek, the word was borrowed into Italian and medieval Latin, and onwards into French. Early forms include:
, recorded in Sicilian in the twelfth century , recorded in Latin in the thirteenth century , recorded in Veronese in the fourteenth century , recorded in Old French
From these forms came the botanical Latin . This was used by Tournefort as a genus name in 1700, then by Linnaeus as a species name in 1753. It remains in scientific use.
These forms also gave rise to the Caribbean English melongene.
The Italian , through folk-etymology, was adapted to (): already by the thirteenth century, this name had given rise to a tradition that eggplants could cause insanity. Translated into English as 'mad-apple', 'rage-apple', or 'raging apple', this name for eggplants is attested from 1578 and the form 'mad-apple' may still be found in Southern American English.
Other English names The plant is also known as guinea squash in Southern American English. The term guinea in the name originally denoted the fact that the fruits were associated with West Africa, specifically the region that is now the modern day country Guinea.
It has been known as Jew's apple, apparently in relation to a belief that the fruit was first imported to the West Indies by Jewish people."brown-jolly", in "brown, adj.", "Jews' apple" in "Jew, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, July 2018. Accessed 23 September 2018.
History
There is no consensus about the place of origin of eggplant; the plant species has been described as native to South Asia, where it continues to grow wild, or Africa. It has been cultivated in southern and eastern Asia since prehistory. The earliest known mention of the eggplant is in the 59 BCE "Slave's Contract" (; ) by Chinese poet Wang Bao (); (Wang Bao), "Slave's Contract ()"; Gujin Tushu Jicheng version, vol. 330, p. 83. (二月春分，……別茄披蔥。) subsequently, the plant was mentioned in other later sources such as Qimin Yaoshu, an agricultural treatise completed in 544 CE.
Eggplant was introduced to Europe through the Iberian Peninsula, where it became a staple among Muslim and Jewish communities. The presence of numerous Arabic and North African names for the vegetable, coupled with the absence of ancient Greek and Roman names, suggests that it was cultivated in the Mediterranean area by Arabs during the early Middle Ages, arriving in Spain in the 8th century. A book on agriculture by Ibn Al-Awwam in 12th-century Muslim Spain described how to grow aubergines.The Book of Agriculture by Ibn Al-Awwam , translated from Arabic to French by J.-J. Clément-Mullet, year 1866, volume 2 page 236. Records exist from later medieval Catalan and Spanish,The first record of Catalan albergínia = "aubergine" is in 1328 according to the Catalan dictionary Diccionari.cat . An earlier record in Catalan is known, from the 13th century, according to the French Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales . A number of old variant spellings for the aubergine word in Romance dialects in Iberia indicate the word was borrowed from Arabic; Dictionary of Arabic and Allied Loanwords: Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician and Kindred Dialects , by Federico Corriente, year 2008 page 60. as well as from 14th-century Italy. p. 418 Unlike its popularity in Spain and limited presence in southern Italy, the eggplant remained relatively obscure in other regions of Europe until the 17th century.
The aubergine is unrecorded in England until the 16th century. An English botany book in 1597 described the "madde or raging Apple":
The Europeans brought it to the Americas. citing Daunay M-C, Laterrot H, Janick J (2008) Iconography and History of Solanaceae: Antiquity to the 17th Century. Horticultural Reviews. Wiley, New York, pp 1–111
Because of the plant's relationship with various other nightshades, the fruit was at one time believed to be extremely poisonous. The flowers and leaves can be poisonous if consumed in large quantities due to the presence of solanine.
The eggplant has a special place in folklore. In 13th-century Italian traditional folklore, the eggplant can cause insanity.Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition, 2000, s.v. 'mad-apple' In 19th-century Egypt, insanity was said to be "more common and more violent" when the eggplant is in season in the summer.Edward William Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, v. 1, p. 378, footnote 1.
Cultivars
Different cultivars of the plant produce fruit of different size, shape, and color, though typically purple. The less common white varieties of eggplant are also known as Easter white eggplants, garden eggs, Casper or white eggplant. The most widely cultivated varieties—cultivars—in Europe and North America today are elongated ovoid, long and broad with a dark purple skin.