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Tomato Toast
Stew 1 quart of tomatoes and season nicely with salt, pepper, a dash of cayenne, 1 tablespoonful of sugar and butter. A very little nutmeg or mace may be added if liked, and just a suspicion of onion juice. Toast thin slices of entire wheat bread to an even, delicate brown; put them on a hot platter and moisten slightly with hot water and melted butter. Cover the toast with the hot tomato, and just before serving put 1 spoonful of thick, whipped cream on the top of each slice.
This is a nice breakfast or lunch dish to serve with a plain omelet and crisp slices of bacon.
A straightforward stewed-tomato dish on buttered toast; the only real technique is reducing the tomatoes enough that they sit on the bread instead of soaking through it.
- The hinge: reduce the tomatoesA quart of tomatoes carries a lot of water, and thin stewed tomato will collapse the toast in seconds. Simmer uncovered 20-30 minutes until the mixture mounds on a spoon, and dress the slices only at the moment of serving.
- A quart of tomatoesRoughly one 28-oz can with its juice, or about 2 lb of fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped. The recipe does not specify fresh or canned, so either reading is defensible.
- Entire wheat breadAn older term for whole wheat. Use a firm, close-grained whole wheat loaf cut thin, about 3/8 inch; soft sandwich bread will not survive the moistening step.
- Butter, unmeasuredButter -- The phrase "1 tablespoonful of sugar and butter" can be read either as a tablespoonful of each or as a measure governing the sugar alone, with the butter left to the cook. About two tablespoons of butter to a quart of tomatoes suits it either way.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion and press the pulp through a fine sieve, or squeeze it in a cloth. The point is aroma without texture, so a teaspoon at most; chopped onion changes the dish.
- Moistening the toastA period trick for keeping toast tender under a wet topping: a spoonful of hot water and melted butter brushed over each slice, not a soaking. Do it on the hot platter, immediately before the tomato goes on.
- The whipped creamUnsweetened heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks, spooned onto each slice just before serving as the recipe directs.
- YieldThe recipe does not say how many slices; a quart of stewed tomato will cover roughly four to six thin slices, and the text suggests serving it alongside a plain omelet and bacon.
Creamed and stewed vegetables on toast were common in American breakfast and luncheon cookery in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, toast serving as the plate: it stretched a small quantity of vegetable, used up bread, and required no last-minute pastry or rice. Canned tomatoes were among the earliest and most successful canned goods, and a household with its own put-up jars could produce a hot dish like this out of season. The whole wheat bread is suggestive too: "entire wheat" flour was promoted by health reformers in the late nineteenth century and appears in general cookbooks of the period.