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Tomatoes, Grilled
The tomatoes should be small, ripe, and whole. Coat them with oil, butter, clarified fat, or bacon fat, and grill over a clear fire on a greased gridiron for five to ten minutes. The American mode is to cut them into thin slices, coat them with butter, mustard, and a pinch of salt and sugar, and grill in the usual way. If cooked in a Dutch oven before the fire they are almost as good.
A straightforward grill, but the vessel names and the fire it assumes need translating.
- Choose the right tomatoSmall, firm-ripe tomatoes hold together on the bars; a soft or overripe fruit collapses and the juice puts out the fire. Cherry or cocktail tomatoes on the vine, or small plum tomatoes, work best whole.
- A clear fireThis means charcoal or wood burned down to glowing embers with no flame or smoke, roughly a medium-hot grill where you can hold a hand at grate level for three or four seconds. Under a gas or electric broiler, set the rack about 4 inches from the element.
- Grease the gridiron, then grease it againThe hinge of the dish. Tomato skin sticks and tears the moment it hits bare metal, and a torn tomato loses its juice into the coals. Oil the bars while they are hot and oil the fruit as well.
- Clarified fat and bacon fatBoth are worth using here for the higher smoke point and the flavour. Plain butter, which the recipe also allows, is more likely to scorch over live coals than clarified butter, beef dripping or bacon drippings.
- Five to ten minutesThat is right for whole tomatoes, which need time for the interior to heat through without the skin bursting. Turn them once. Sliced tomatoes in the "American mode" need far less, two to three minutes a side, until marked and softened but not falling apart.
- The mustard coatingUse a smooth prepared mustard or a little English mustard powder mixed into the softened butter, with the salt and a scant pinch of sugar. The recipe does not say why the sugar is there; a pinch of that size would do more to help the cut faces brown than to sweeten them.
- Dutch oven before the fireNot the modern lidded casserole. A Victorian Dutch oven was an open-fronted tin reflector set on the hearth facing the flames. A hot broiler, or a hot oven, is the nearest modern substitute.
- YieldReckon two or three small whole tomatoes, or one large sliced one, per person as a side or breakfast dish. Serve at once; grilled tomatoes go watery within minutes of leaving the heat.
Grilled tomatoes had settled firmly into British cooking by the late nineteenth century, chiefly as an adjunct to the cooked breakfast and to grilled chops and steaks, where the acidity cut the fat. Tomatoes had been eaten in England for generations by this point but were still often cooked at length or reduced to sauce; grilling the whole fruit is comparatively plain treatment. The note that "the American mode" is to slice, then butter with mustard, salt and sugar, shows an awareness of American practice with tomatoes. The reflector Dutch oven mentioned at the end was being displaced as closed ranges replaced open hearths, and its appearance here suggests a book written for households that might still have either.