Thai eggplant substitutes

The small round purple aubergines sold in bags at South Asian and Middle Eastern groceries.

Best for

green curry and red curry, the closest available match, curries you want to look right

Almost the same size and seed structure as Thai eggplant, and it holds its shape well in a simmering curry, which is the main thing. The skin is thicker and purple, and the flesh is sweeter with much less of the bitter edge, so the curry comes out slightly rounder and simpler. A squeeze of lime at the end restores some of the contrast.

The long, slim, pale purple aubergines with thin skin and few seeds.

Best for

green curry, curry stir-fries, quick weeknight curries

Tender, silky and sweet, with skin thin enough that it does not need peeling. The important thing is timing: it goes from firm to fully melting in about eight minutes and drinks up coconut milk as it goes, so the curry gets richer and the pieces almost disappear. Add it near the end and cut it thicker than you think you need to.

The large purple aubergine every supermarket carries.

Best for

any Thai curry when nothing else is available, cheap and easy shopping, curries you do not mind being creamy

Usable and the biggest change on this list. The flesh is spongy with large seeds, so it soaks up oil, collapses into the sauce and turns the curry creamier and less distinct in texture. Salt the cubes for 15 minutes and pat them dry to reduce how much oil they drink, and add them for only the last eight to ten minutes of cooking.

Firm mild squashes that keep their shape.

Best for

green curry, when you want the vegetable to stay in one piece, shopping at an ordinary supermarket

These hold their shape better than globe eggplant does and stay slightly crunchy, which is closer to what Thai eggplant actually does. What they have none of is the bitterness, so the curry is sweeter and more one-note. Chayote is firmer and blander of the two and is the better choice. Cut them into 2 cm pieces and add them in the last five minutes.

A crisp pepper standing in for the bitter, crunchy element.

Best for

red curry, curry stir-fries, when the bitterness is what you want to keep

Of everything that is not an eggplant, this comes closest to the slightly bitter, vegetal quality Thai eggplant contributes, and it keeps a real crunch through a short simmer. The catch is a distinct sweet pepper flavour that reads clearly as not-Thai, which is fine in a red curry and more obvious in a delicate green one.

A stand-in for the tiny pea eggplants, makhua puang, rather than the golf-ball kind.

Best for

green curry and jungle curry that call for pea eggplant, keeping the pop-in-the-mouth texture, supermarket shopping

Pea eggplants are used whole by the handful and are there for bitterness and a small burst of texture. Frozen peas give you the same size and the same pop, and then the opposite flavour: they are sweet where pea eggplant is markedly bitter. If that bitterness mattered to the dish, add a little extra lime, or a few thin slices of bitter melon if you can get it.