Cut tomatoes in halves; take out some of the pulp. Fry 1 large onion in butter, add the tomato pulp, a piece of beef-marrow, 2 sprigs of chopped parsley, salt and pepper. Remove from the fire; add a beaten egg and mix with bread-crumbs and a pinch of nutmeg. Then fill the tomatoes, sprinkle with buttered bread-crumbs and bake until done. Serve on a platter with poached eggs. Garnish with croutons.
A terse turn-of-the-century daily-dish entry that assumes a cook who already knows how stuffed tomatoes behave. The quantities are left to judgement, so the notes below fill in what the original takes for granted.
- Quantities and yieldNo number of tomatoes is given. The one onion and one egg specified would be about right for roughly four large tomatoes (eight halves), with breadcrumbs added to bind — perhaps a cup of fresh crumbs — but the yield is a guess, not in the original.
- Oven heatThe original says only "bake until done" and names no oven heat. In a modern oven, something around 350-375F for 25-30 minutes will set the egg-bound filling and brown the crumb topping without collapsing the shells.
- Beef marrowMarrow was a common enricher in French and Italian cookery of the period, and marrow bones can still be had from many butchers. Scoop the raw marrow out, dice it, and let it melt into the hot onion. Butter or a rendered pork fat will stand in.
- Drain the shellsThe hinge of the dish. Salt the hollowed halves lightly and set them cut side down for 15 minutes before filling, or the water they throw off turns the crumb stuffing to porridge.
- Two kinds of crumbsThe filling wants soft fresh crumbs, which absorb the pulp; the topping wants dry crumbs tossed in melted butter, which brown. Using dry crumbs throughout gives a filling that sets hard.
- Cook the pulp downAdd the reserved pulp to the fried onion and let it reduce until it no longer runs on the pan. The mixture must be off the heat and cooled a little before the beaten egg goes in, or the egg scrambles.
- The poached eggs and croutonsThese belong to the dish rather than being an afterthought: the original directs the tomatoes onto a platter with poached eggs and a crouton garnish, though it does not say how they are arranged. Poach the eggs while the tomatoes finish baking so nothing waits.
Books like this one belong to a genre popular either side of 1900 — a dish a day for the year, each tagged with a nationality, aimed at a middle-class housekeeper who wanted variety without a professional kitchen. The "Italian" label here mostly signals the tomato itself. The technique, though, is thoroughly French-trained: an onion sweated in butter, marrow for richness, an egg to bind, a buttered crumb gratin on top, croutons and poached eggs to turn a vegetable into a course. Marrow appears constantly in cookery of this period, and marrow bones were commonly bought as such. Stuffed tomatoes in some form — pomodori ripieni — remain standard across Italy, usually with rice or breadcrumbs and herbs, and the version here is a recognisable relative dressed for a luncheon table.