I’d periodically wondered whether aubergine, the French and British English word for eggplant (as well as the blackish-brownish-purple color of some cultivars), was regarded as characteristic of (Mediterranean) auberge fare, but it looks as though the etymology is completely unrelated, following a convoluted and branching game of Asia-through-MENA-to-Europe telephone tag:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220622081004/https://morph.surrey.ac.uk/index.php/2022/06/22/the-story-of-aubergine/