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Fried Tomatoes
Peel the tomatoes by pouring hot water over them, cut in slices about one-half inch thick, dip each slice into white flour and into beaten eggs, sprinkle salt and pepper over each slice and fry in hot lard. These make a very pretty garnish.
A straightforward pan-fry, but the order of operations in the original is worth adjusting and the choice of tomato matters more than anything else.
- Use firm, underripe fruitUse firm fruit -- Slices half an inch thick from a dead-ripe tomato will collapse in the pan and shed water into the fat. Firm or barely blushing tomatoes hold their shape better, though the book's instruction to peel by scalding points to ripe fruit rather than green.
- Peeling is optional hereScalding to loosen the skin makes sense for a stewed or canned tomato, but the skin helps a fried slice keep its edge. Skip it unless you want the softer result the book intends.
- Reverse the coatingAs written, flour then egg gives a thin, slippery layer that tends to slide off. Salt and pepper the slices first, then flour, then egg, and press the seasoned flour on firmly; a second dip in flour or fine cornmeal after the egg gives a crust that stays put.
- Lard and its substitutesLard was a common frying fat in American household cookery of this period. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works; about a quarter inch in the pan is enough for shallow frying.
- Fat temperatureThe book gives no temperature. 'Hot lard' means a moderate frying heat, in the region of 350F. Too cool and the egg coating absorbs grease; too hot and the crust browns before the tomato softens.
- TimingTwo to three minutes a side, turned once. Drain on a rack rather than paper so the underside does not steam.
- YieldTwo large tomatoes give roughly 8–10 slices, enough for four as a side dish or as the garnish the book has in mind.
Frying sliced tomatoes in a flour or egg coating appears widely in American household cookery of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Fried green tomatoes are often taken to be a strictly Southern dish, but recipes of the period turn up in Northern and Midwestern books as well. The closing line here is characteristic of the period: a fried slice was valued partly for what it did to the look of a platter, in an era when a joint of meat was commonly sent to table garnished.