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Broiled Tomatoes (Cut firm ripe tomatoes)
Cut firm, ripe tomatoes in halves, crosswise. Rub each half lightly with a clove of garlic, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and fine, buttered bread crumbs mixed with a tablespoon of sugar. Place in a well-buttered broiler and broil five minutes. Remove carefully to a well-buttered shallow ramekin, dot over with bits of butter, finish cooking in the oven, and serve.
A straightforward summer side that needs only a few translations. The one thing worth getting right is the tomato itself.
- Choose the right tomatoThe recipe asks for firm, ripe fruit. A dead-ripe slicing tomato collapses under the broiler and floods the pan; a firmer beefsteak or Roma holds its shape.
- "Broiler" hereIn this period the word could mean a hinged wire gridiron over coals or under a gas flame, not the drawer in an electric range. Use a rack set 4-5 inches under a preheated broiler, or start the halves cut-side up in a heavy skillet with butter.
- The sugar is a lotA full tablespoon of sugar in the crumb mixture reads sweet to modern palates and burns quickly under direct heat. A teaspoon is enough to encourage browning; watch it constantly either way, since buttered crumbs go from gold to black in under a minute.
- Buttered crumbsFresh crumbs from day-old bread tossed with melted butter, roughly 2 tablespoons butter to a cup of crumbs. Panko works and stays crisper.
- Finish in the ovenNo temperature is given. 375F for 8-12 minutes will soften the tomato through without turning it to sauce; the crumbs are already browned, so cover loosely with foil if they darken further.
- RamekinPeriod usage means any small shallow baking dish, not necessarily the straight-sided porcelain cup sold under that name now. A gratin dish or quarter sheet pan is fine, and you can skip the transfer entirely if you broiled in an ovenproof pan.
- GarlicRubbing a cut clove over the surface gives a faint perfume only. If you want the garlic to register, mince a clove into the crumbs instead.
- YieldFigure one medium tomato, two halves, per person as a side; four tomatoes serve four.
Broiled and baked tomatoes turn up constantly in American cookbooks from the 1880s onward, and July is when tomatoes were abundant and had to be used. The buttered-crumb-and-sugar treatment reflects what appears to have been a period habit of sweetening tomatoes, which nineteenth-century Americans are often said to have treated with suspicion until relatively late, and which they frequently handled more like a fruit than a vegetable. The garlic rub is the more unusual touch for a mainstream domestic-science book of the era, when garlic was widely regarded as foreign and strong-flavored; used this way, on a surface only, it let a cook suggest the flavor without committing to it.