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Baked Tomatoes
Cut a thin slice from blossom side of twelve solid, smooth, ripe tomatoes, with a tea-spoon remove pulp without breaking shell; take a small, solid head of cabbage and one onion, chop fine, add bread crumbs rubbed fine, and pulp of tomatoes, season with pepper, salt and sugar, add a tea-cup good sweet cream, mix well together, fill tomatoes, put the slice back in its place, lay them stem end down in a buttered baking-dish with just enough water (some cook without water), with a small lump of butter on each, to keep from burning, and bake half an hour, or until thoroughly done; place a bit of butter on each and serve in baking-dish. They make a handsome dish for a dinner-table. -Mrs. S. Watson, Upper San-. dusky.
A stuffed-tomato recipe from an Ohio contributor, written for a cook who already knew her stove. Two things need attention: the oven temperature is never named, and the raw cabbage in the filling will not soften in half an hour.
- Cook the cabbage firstChopped raw cabbage and onion need longer than thirty minutes to lose their crunch and raw sulphurous edge, and the tomato shells will collapse before they get there. Sweat both in butter until tender before mixing with the crumbs and pulp.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate oven, 350-375F, is right for this; the half hour is realistic only if the filling goes in already cooked and warm.
- A tea-cup of creamPeriod teacups ran smaller than a modern cup, somewhere between about 1/2 and 3/4 cup, so treat the quantity as approximate. Use heavy cream, and add it gradually - the filling should be moist and hold its shape, not slump.
- Bread crumbs"Rubbed fine" means dry crumbs from stale bread, rubbed through the hands or a sieve, not soft fresh crumbs and not the sandy commercial kind. They are the thickener here, so add enough to absorb the tomato pulp and cream.
- Hollowing the shellsCutting the slice from the blossom end (the end opposite the stem) and setting them stem end down gives a flat base and a natural lid. Leave the shell walls a good quarter inch thick or they will split in the oven.
- The waterThe note that "some cook without water" is sound. Tomatoes release plenty of liquid; a couple of tablespoons in the dish is insurance against scorching, no more, or the bottoms poach and go slack.
- YieldTwelve tomatoes serves six as a side dish, or four as a light supper. They are meant to go to the table in the baking dish, which also keeps them from falling apart in transit.
Buckeye Cookery (1877) was assembled from contributions sent in by Ohio housewives, many signed with a name and town - here Mrs. S. Watson of Upper Sandusky - and that structure explains the recipe's shape: no oven temperature, and a timing given only as "half an hour, or until thoroughly done," because the writer assumed a reader with the same wood range and the same instincts. Tomatoes had by this period largely shed their earlier reputation in America for being unwholesome; by the 1870s they were common garden produce, and cookbooks of the period are full of them baked, scalloped, stewed and stuffed. The cabbage-and-onion filling is a frugal touch typical of the book, using up a cheap keeping vegetable to extend a summer one, while the tea-cup of sweet cream marks the dish as company food - which is exactly the claim made in the last line about the dinner table.