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Mother's Sliced Tomatoes
Prepare half an hour before dinner, scald a few at a time in boiling water, peel, slice, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, set away in a cool place, or lay a piece of ice on them. Serve as a relish for dinner in their own liquor. Those who desire may add vinegar and sugar.
A dressed tomato salad from the era before refrigeration, and one that depends almost entirely on timing. The half hour is the point: long enough for salt to draw the juice out, short enough that the slices still have body.
- The hinge: half an hour, no moreSalt pulls liquid from the cells, and that liquor is the dressing. Left an hour or two, the slices collapse and go watery rather than juicy.
- Scalding to peelScore an X in the blossom end, drop into boiling water 15-30 seconds, then into cold water. The skins slip off. "A few at a time" matters because a crowded pot cools and the tomatoes start to cook.
- Whether to peel at allSkin toughness varies a good deal by variety. With thin-skinned tomatoes the scalding step can be skipped entirely.
- "Lay a piece of ice on them"An instruction from the days of block ice and no mechanical refrigeration. A piece of ice set directly on the slices chilled them and melted into the liquor. Refrigerate instead, uncovered or loosely covered, and serve within the half hour.
- Vinegar and sugarFor the optional dressing, about a tablespoon of cider vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar to a pound of tomatoes is in the right range. Add it at the end so the vinegar does not further soften the fruit.
- QuantityNo amount is given. Reckon one medium tomato per person as a side relish, two if it is standing in as the salad course.
- Serve in the liquorDo not drain. Spoon the accumulated juice over the slices in a shallow dish; a slotted platter defeats the whole recipe.
Buckeye Cookery (1877) belongs to a moment when tomatoes had become an ordinary summer vegetable in American kitchens; the story that they had only lately shed a long reputation as suspect, even poisonous, is popular lore rather than established fact. The book is full of recipes for cooking them down into sauces, soups and ketchups, so a raw preparation stands out; salting sliced tomatoes and letting them sit was one way to make a "relish" of them, a term generally taken to mean a small sharp dish served alongside the meat rather than a salad course in its own right. The vinegar-and-sugar option is often said to be the older habit, a holdover from sweet-sour dressings for raw vegetables before oil-based dressings became common in home cooking. The attribution to "Mother" is typical of the volume, which was compiled from contributions by Ohio housewives and often kept the domestic voice of the source intact.