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Stuffed Tomato Salad
Select six smooth, ripe tomatoes. Scald quickly and remove skins. Cut a slice from stem ends, scoop out pulp and chill tomato cups. Drain the pulp and add an equal quantity of crisp celery cut in small pieces, cucumber cut in small dice, and shrimp broken in four pieces. Moisten with Mayonnaise Dressing. Refill tomato cups, put a rose of Mayonnaise on top of each, using pastry bag and rose tube. Serve in lettuce heart leaves.
A straightforward composed salad that depends entirely on temperature and drainage — everything must be cold and nothing may be wet.
- Drain, then drain againThe hinge of the dish. Salt the hollowed shells lightly and invert them on a rack for 20 minutes, and press the pulp in a sieve rather than just tipping off the loose juice. Wet filling collapses into the lettuce within minutes of serving.
- Scalding"Scald quickly" is usually taken to mean roughly 15-30 seconds in boiling water, then straight into ice water. Longer and the outer flesh cooks and the cups will not hold their shape.
- The shrimpAt the time this would most likely have been canned or barrel shrimp, small and already cooked. Use small cooked shrimp, and taste for salt before adding any to the dressing — canned and barrelled shrimp were often saltier than what you will buy now.
- ProportionsNo quantities are given because the pulp sets them: measure the drained pulp, then add a like quantity of celery, cucumber and shrimp. Note that "an equal quantity" is ambiguous — taken as an equal volume of each, the filling will far exceed what six tomato shells can hold, so treat it as an equal quantity of the three together and adjust to fit.
- MayonnaiseThe book's own dressing is an egg-yolk mayonnaise. Homemade mayonnaise contains raw yolk, so if serving to anyone frail, pregnant or elderly, use pasteurised eggs or a jarred mayonnaise thinned with lemon juice.
- The piped roseMayonnaise stiff enough to hold a rose tube needs to be quite thick and thoroughly chilled; a thin dressing will slump. Pipe just before serving, or omit and simply spoon a little on top.
- Yield and timingSix tomatoes, six servings, as a first course or lunch salad. Fill no more than 30 minutes ahead and keep refrigerated.
Stuffed tomatoes were a fixture of American luncheon and Sunday-dinner menus from the 1890s through the 1920s, when the tomato had shifted from a suspect novelty to the standard vehicle for a cold salad course. Canned shrimp, shipped inland from Gulf and Atlantic packing houses, brought shellfish to households far from any coast, and it turns up constantly in salads of this period for exactly that reason.