The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

certain things by examining their bottoms (like
mandrills or crabs), eggplants are not one of them—
in reality, eggplants don’t even have a sex.
So how do you find an eggplant with fewer seeds?
The best way is to compare them by weight—the less
dense an eggplant is, the less seedy it will be. But
eggplants that are less dense are harder to work
with—they turn mushy more easily and absorb more
oil while cooking—which makes this advice totally
impractical.
Here’s a better way to do it: just buy Italian
eggplants. They are far less seedy than their larger
American counterparts. They are also denser, less
cumbersome to work with, and almost as widely
available.