Salt Trumps Bitter The New York TimesThis is a guest posting by Kenneth Chang. John Tierney is on vacation. In this weeks Science Times, I wrote about cooking a meal for food scientist Shirley Corriher and looking for scientific reasons for some of the odd things recipes make you do. One of the things I had intended to cook that evening was an eggplant stirfry, because I wanted to ask whether one needed to salt eggplant as many recipes tell you to do to reduce bitterness. When I later talked with Harold Mc. A classic, easy Eggplant Rollatini recipe. Eggplant dishes are one of my favorites and since I was having some vegetarians for a large dinner, I did some looking. Gee, another food scientist, he brought up two interesting points 1. Its hard to find a bitter eggplant these days. Farmers and agricultural researchers appear to have found good non bitter varieties. The usual explanation for why salt would eliminate bitterness doesnt entirely make sense, anyway. The usual explanation is that salt draws out water from the eggplant through osmosis true, and that with the water come the bitter alkaloid compounds. But the water almost certainly wouldnt wash away all of the alkaloids or even a majority of them. Extracting water also makes the eggplant a bit firmer. But salt can remove bitterness without removing the bitter compounds. LidiasItaly/recipespics/LI-EGGPLANT-PARMIGIANA.jpg' alt='Salting Eggplant Recipes' title='Salting Eggplant Recipes' />Ms. Corriher described a demonstration given by Gary Beauchamp, director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. Its an experiment you can try at home. Get a bottle of tonic water. Take a taste. The bitterness is quinine, a compound derived from bark of the cinchona tree. In this Italian classic, eggplant involtini, ricottastuffed parcels bake with homemade tomato sauce and cream, a perfect way to celebrate eggplant season Semibreaded eggplant slices are delicious, and a similar technique could easily be used for other summer vegetables. Theres also a bit of sweetness from sugar or corn syrup added to offset the bitterness. Add a bit of salt to the bottle. Salting Eggplant For Eggplant ParmesanSalting Eggplant To Remove BitternessTake another taste. Its almost like sugar water, Ms. Corriher said. You taste a little quinine, but its just the change is amazing, how the salt suppresses bitterness. Surprisingly, salt suppresses bitterness better than sugar. That is why some people sprinkle salt on grapefruit, cantaloupe and other fruit. Sugar Ingredients. Its apparently not known how salt suppresses the bitterness, whether the salt somehow disrupts the bitter receptors on the tongue or whether its some sort of post processing by the brain.