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Tomatoes, Stuffed
Choose half a dozen large tomatoes of uniform size. Slice off the stalks and the green parts round them, and scoop out the pips without breaking the sides of the fruit. Make a stuffing as follows. Mince two ounces of fat bacon, and put it into a stewpan with half a dozen mushrooms chopped small, a handful of parsley, a small sprig of thyme, three or four shallots, all chopped, and a little pepper and salt. Stir this mixture over a gentle fire for five minutes, then bind it together with the well-beaten yolks of three eggs. Fill the tomatoes with this stuffing, set them side by side in a saute-pan, and pour in salad-oil to the height of a quarter of an inch. Sprinkle bread-raspings lightly over the tomatoes, and place them on a brisk fire, holding a red-hot shovel over them, or bake them in a quick oven. Serve on a hot dish, and pour some good brown sauce round them. Time to fry the tomatoes, from ten to fifteen minutes. Probable cost, tomatoes, 2d. to 6d. per pound. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A Victorian stuffed tomato cooked in shallow oil rather than dry-baked, with the top browned from above. Most of the work is in getting the stuffing to set without weeping.
- The hinge: drain the shellsOnce the pips are scooped out, salt the cavities lightly and stand them upside down for 15 minutes. Tomatoes hold a surprising amount of liquid, and if it runs out during cooking the egg-bound stuffing loosens and the oil spits.
- "A quick oven"Roughly 400-425F on the usual conversions for the term. The recipe gives 10-15 minutes for the stovetop method; in the oven allow rather longer for large tomatoes, until the stuffing is firm to the touch and reads 160F.
- The red-hot shovelThis is a salamander - a heated iron held over food to brown the surface, standard before overhead heat existed in ranges. Use the broiler for the last two or three minutes instead.
- Bread-raspingsDried crusts and trimmings grated to a coarse powder, drier and sandier than fresh crumbs. Panko or oven-dried breadcrumbs give the same effect; fresh soft crumbs will go soggy in the oil.
- Salad-oilIn Victorian usage this generally means olive oil, though a neutral oil behaves the same here. A quarter of an inch in a saute-pan is shallow frying, not basting - the tomatoes cook from the bottom up while the top browns.
- Fat baconUnsmoked streaky bacon or salt pork, chopped rather than sliced. Modern smoked bacon will dominate the mushrooms and thyme; if that is all you have, use less than the two ounces called for.
- ShallotsShallots of the period were generally smaller than today's, so three or four need not mean three whole modern banana shallots; a couple of tablespoons chopped is nearer the mark.
- Brown sauceEspagnole or a reduced demi-glace. A good reduced beef or veal stock thickened lightly is closer to the intention than bottled brown sauce, which in Britain now means something quite different and sweet.
- YieldSix tomatoes, described as enough for six or seven people, which marks this as a garnish or savoury course rather than a main dish. As a light lunch it serves three.
Cassell's places this among the tomato entries at a moment when the fruit had only recently become ordinary in British cooking, and the priced note of "2d. to 6d. per pound" reflects a produce item whose cost swung with the season and the greenhouse trade. The stuffing itself is not really Italian or Spanish in character but a straightforward French duxelles: mushrooms, shallots, parsley and thyme sweated in fat, here enriched with bacon and bound with yolks, the same mixture that fills mushroom caps and lines a beef Wellington. The instruction to hold a red-hot shovel over the dish is the clearest period detail; browning from above was a separate operation performed with a heated iron until ranges and gas grills made overhead heat routine.