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Garnish, Tomatoes For
Remove the stalks of the tomatoes. Put them into a saucepan, sufficiently large for all to be in it without resting one upon another. Cover them with good gravy, and stew gently until tender, turning them carefully once or twice, to ensure their being equally cooked. Remove the tomatoes, and keep them hot. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and butter, add cayenne and salt, and let it boil two or three minutes longer. Place the tomatoes round the cutlets, etc., and serve the same separately. Time, half an hour to boil the tomatoes. Sufficient for a hot joint. Probable cost, 9d. or 1s.
A Victorian side garnish: whole tomatoes stewed in meat gravy and ringed around a joint or cutlets, with the thickened cooking liquid served in a boat alongside. The method is sound; only the timing needs rethinking.
- Half an hour is too longHalf an hour is likely too long for modern fruit -- a fully ripe modern tomato may collapse into skin and pulp in that time. Stew gently for 10 to 15 minutes, until a skewer meets no resistance but the fruit still holds its shape, and choose firm, slightly underripe tomatoes on the small side.
- "Good gravy" means stock, not sauceIn Cassell's usage this is the strained meat gravy or brown stock kept in the larder, unthickened. Use a well-flavoured beef or veal stock, or the deglazed juices from the joint you are serving. A packet gravy already thickened will not reduce cleanly and will turn pasty when the flour goes in.
- One layer onlyThe instruction about not resting one tomato on another is the hinge of the recipe. Stacked tomatoes cook unevenly and the lower ones burst under the weight. Choose a shallow pan wide enough for a single layer, and keep the liquid at a bare tremble rather than a boil.
- Turning themTurn with two spoons, not tongs, and only once or twice as directed. Each turn is an opportunity to split the skin, which is what releases the pulp and clouds the gravy.
- ThickeningWork equal weights of soft butter and flour into a paste and whisk it into the simmering gravy in small pieces, then boil two or three minutes to cook out the raw flour taste. About 15 g of each will thicken 300 ml of stock to a light coating consistency.
- SeasoningThe recipe adds cayenne and salt only after the gravy is thickened, so season at the end and taste as you go. Aim for a warm background heat behind the sweetness of the tomatoes rather than obvious spice.
- Quantity and cost'Sufficient for a hot joint' is not quantified; enough small tomatoes to ring the dish, perhaps a pound, is a reasonable working amount. The 9d or 1s suggests tomatoes were still a comparatively dear item, sold by weight and sensitive to season.
Tomatoes entered the ordinary English kitchen late. Grown in Britain from the late sixteenth century as curiosities and often called 'love apples', they were, according to a widely repeated tradition, regarded with suspicion because of their kinship to the nightshades; they became a common market vegetable only in the nineteenth century, as glasshouse cultivation and rail transport put them within reach of urban households. Cassell's, arranged alphabetically, treats this preparation as a garnish, and at the time a tomato was still commonly used as a relish or accent to meat rather than as a dish in its own right; stewing it in gravy folds it firmly into the flavour of the roast. The technique itself is older than the ingredient: braising whole fruit or vegetables in stock and then thickening the liquor with flour and butter is a standard English kitchen procedure of the period, applied here to something that a generation or two earlier would have been eaten only rarely.