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Tapioca and Tomatoes
Soak a table-spoonful of tapioca in water for a couple of hours, set it to boil, adding a little more water till quite done to the consistency of porridge. Add pepper, salt, and a little fresh butter. Cut two tomatoes in half, remove pips and watery substance, sprinkle with a little pepper and salt. Fill each half-tomato with the tapioca, sprinkle the top with grated Parmesan and baked bread-crumbs, put them into the oven for twenty minutes, and serve.
A stuffed-tomato savoury from the era when tapioca was a general-purpose thickener rather than a pudding. The whole thing hinges on cooking the tapioca until no white centres remain before it ever goes near the tomatoes.
- Which tapiocaThe book most likely means pearl tapioca, the small pearls rather than instant granules or flour. A tablespoon of pearls swells several times over in cooking, giving enough thick porridge to fill the four tomato halves, with little to spare.
- The soak is not optionalTwo hours in cold water hydrates the pearls so they cook through evenly. Undersoaked pearls keep an opaque, chalky core that stays gritty no matter how long the tomatoes bake.
- ConsistencyCook to a thick porridge that mounds on a spoon, adding water a splash at a time. If it is loose it will slump out of the tomato shells and flood the dish.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. A moderate oven, 350F, for the stated twenty minutes suits it; the tomatoes should soften and the crumb top colour without the shells collapsing.
- Hollowing the tomatoesHalve them across the equator, not through the stem, so each half sits flat. Scoop out seeds and jelly, then salt the cut surfaces and leave them upside down for ten minutes to shed water.
- Baked bread-crumbsThese are dried crumbs, the Victorian pantry staple made from stale bread dried in a cool oven and sieved. Panko or any dry crumb works; fresh soft crumbs will go soggy rather than crisp.
- SeasoningTapioca is entirely bland and will absorb far more salt than seems reasonable. Season the porridge assertively before filling, and taste it.
- ServingTwo tomatoes gives four halves, which is a savoury course or light lunch for two. Support them in a dish or muffin tin so they cannot tip.
This is a vegetable savoury of the kind that carried much of the weight in late-Victorian and Edwardian meatless cookery, where the aim was a dish substantial enough to stand as a course in its own right. Tapioca, made from the starch of the cassava root and imported through Brazil and the East Indies, reached British kitchens in quantity during the nineteenth century and was used far more broadly than the milk puddings it is now remembered for: as a soup thickener, a binder, and here as a neutral starchy filling. The tomato itself was still a relative newcomer to everyday English cooking, moving from hothouse curiosity to common greengrocer's stock over the second half of the century. The seeds and watery pulp are removed first to stop the filling flooding.