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Tomatoes, Baked
Slice the stalks, with the green part that adheres to them, from six or eight ripe tomatoes. Season the fruit with pepper and salt, and sprinkle bread-crumbs thickly over. Divide about two ounces of fresh butter into little pieces, and place these here and there upon them. Bake in a moderate oven. Serve on a hot dish as an accompaniment to roast meat of all kinds. If liked, the tomatoes may be cut into slices, or into halves, instead of being baked whole, and they will not then require so much time for baking. Time to bake, from twenty to thirty minutes--till they are quite soft without breaking. Sufficient for five or six persons. Probable cost, tomatoes, 2d. to 6d. per pound.
A plain Victorian side dish that still works: whole tomatoes, seasoned, crumbed and buttered, baked until collapsing but intact. A few of the book's terms and assumptions need translating.
- Oven temperature"Moderate oven" is conventionally read as somewhere around 350F (175C), though the book gives no figure. Whole tomatoes take the stated twenty to thirty minutes; the recipe notes only that halves or slices need less time, so check them early.
- The instruction that matters"Quite soft without breaking" is the whole point. Choose firm, evenly ripe tomatoes of the same size, leave the skins on, and set them in a dish just large enough to hold them upright so they support one another as the flesh gives way.
- Slicing the stalks offThe original means cutting a shallow slice from the stem end to remove the green calyx and core, not hollowing the tomato out. Keep the cut small or the juices run out and the crumbs go soggy.