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Stewed Tomatoes
To one can of hot tomatoes add two-thirds cup toasted bread crumbs. Season with salt, few drops Tobasco sauce, two tablespoons sugar, and one-fourth cup butter. Heat to boiling point and turn into hot serving dish.
A four-ingredient side dish that depends entirely on the crumbs staying coarse and the whole thing being served immediately. Everything here is straightforward; the only real decisions are can size and how much sugar you actually want.
- "One can of tomatoes"Can sizes were not fixed in this period; tomatoes were commonly sold in cans running from about a pint to a full quart (the No. 2 and No. 3 sizes). A modern 14.5-oz can suits the smaller reading, a 28-oz can the larger; scale the other quantities to whichever volume you use.
- Toasted bread crumbsThese are dried, coarse crumbs made from stale bread toasted until dry and golden, not fine packaged crumbs and not fresh soft ones. Fine commercial crumbs dissolve into the tomatoes and give you paste rather than the intended texture.
- The sugarTwo tablespoons to a can of tomatoes reads as very sweet to modern palates. Start with one teaspoon, taste, and add more only if the tomatoes are acidic.
- Serve at onceThe crumbs begin softening the moment they hit the hot tomatoes. Bring it just to the boil, stir in the crumbs at the end if you want them distinct, and turn it out immediately -- ten minutes standing turns it into pudding.
- ButterA quarter cup is 4 tablespoons, or half a stick. Add it off the heat and stir until it emulsifies into the tomatoes rather than pooling on top.
- Tabasco"a few drops" is literal here; the sauce is meant as background heat behind the sugar, not a detectable chile note. Add a few drops and taste.
- YieldServes about four as a vegetable side.
Stewed tomatoes thickened with bread were a fixture of American cooking from the mid-nineteenth century onward, and the sugar-and-butter treatment is a direct descendant of the older habit of serving tomatoes as something closer to a sweet-savory sauce than a plain vegetable. Worth noting is the opening phrase: "one can of hot tomatoes." Commercial canning of tomatoes expanded enormously in the United States after the Civil War, and for decades thereafter a can was the default winter tomato. Tabasco, first bottled in Louisiana in the 1860s, is named as a seasoning without explanation -- a small marker of how quickly a regional condiment spread.