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Tomato Baskets with Cucumber Jelly
Cut cucumber and tomato pulp into pieces, stew tender, pass through sieve, season with white pepper, salt, and vinegar. To 1 cupful of pulp add 1/2 teaspoonful gelatine, dissolved in a little water. Let it become stiff, cut up in dice, and serve in tomato basket. Dress first with a little French dressing; then on top put 1 spoonful of mayonnaise.
A late-Victorian composed salad: hollowed tomatoes carved into handled "baskets" and filled with diced cucumber jelly. The method is sound, but the gelatine quantity and the basket-cutting both need attention before you start.
- The gelatine is the hingeHalf a teaspoon of granulated gelatine per cup of thin vegetable puree is light for a jelly you mean to cut into cubes; a modern envelope (about 2 1/4 teaspoons, 7 g) is reckoned to set roughly 2 cups of liquid, and a jelly firm enough to dice generally wants more gelatine than that, not less. Treat the original figure as unreliable and set a test spoonful in the refrigerator before committing the batch.
- Sheet versus granulesIf the book's "gelatine" was sheet or shredded gelatine, the weight per spoonful differs from today's granulated powder, which is one more reason the stated amount cannot be converted straight across. Bloom powdered gelatine in cold water for five minutes, then dissolve it in the hot purée off the heat.
- Cutting the basketsThe recipe assumes you know the form. Choose firm, evenly round tomatoes, cut down twice from the top to leave a narrow strip across the middle as the handle, remove the two quarters either side, then scoop the interior. Salt the shells lightly and drain them upside down for fifteen minutes so they do not weep into the jelly.
- Seed the cucumberCucumber pulp carries a great deal of water. Halve, scrape out the seeds, and stew the flesh until collapsed, then press it through the sieve and reduce the purée if it looks watery — excess liquid is the usual cause of a jelly that refuses to hold a dice.
- White pepper for a reasonWhite pepper -- White pepper is the usual choice in pale preparations because dark flecks show; the book gives no reason, and note that with tomato pulp in the mixture the set jelly will be pinkish rather than pale green.
- ChillingPour the seasoned purée into a shallow pan so the layer is about 3/4 inch deep, and refrigerate at least three hours, or until it is firm to a fingertip. Cut with a thin knife dipped in hot water.
- Dressing orderThe recipe gives French dressing first and a spoonful of mayonnaise on top; whether the French dressing goes into the shell beneath the cubes or over the diced jelly is not stated, so either reading is defensible. Assemble shortly before serving, as the dressing and standing at room temperature will soften the jelly at the edges.
- YieldOne cupful of pulp makes enough diced jelly for about four medium tomato baskets, served as a first course or a luncheon salad.
Salads of this kind belonged to the era of the "fancy" cold course, when presentation counted for a great deal. Hollowed vegetables used as containers -- tomato baskets, cucumber boats, aspic-lined moulds -- appear widely in American and British cookery manuals from roughly the 1880s onward, by which time commercially processed gelatine had made a clear, reliable jelly far easier to obtain than one rendered at length from calves' feet. By 1900 the tomato was thoroughly at home in the salad chapter. Serving an acid dressing to season and a rich one to finish was a common pattern of the period.