A Nice Way to Cook Tomatoes for Breakfast
A nice way to cook tomatoes for breakfast is to slice them, salt and pepper them, sprinkle with bread crumbs, a little butter on them, and broiled. Serve very hot immediately, without letting them stand.
Broiled breakfast tomatoes — crumbed, buttered and served the moment they come off the heat.
- Broil, don’t stewHere the tomato is cooked fast under high heat, not simmered for hours — a quick, savory breakfast dish.
- Choose firm fruitRipe but firm tomatoes hold their shape under the broiler; very soft ones collapse into the crumbs.
- Crumbs and butterA light layer of bread crumbs and a dot of butter brown into a savory crust; season well with salt and pepper first.
- Serve at onceThe recipe is emphatic — broiled tomatoes weep and soften if they stand, so bring them straight to the table.
- Modern methodA hot oven broiler or a countertop toaster oven does exactly what the old gridiron did; a few minutes is enough.
The cooked breakfast tomato is a Victorian institution, and a lasting one — grilled tomatoes remain a fixture of the traditional British “full breakfast” to this day. In an era when breakfast was a substantial, savory meal rather than a sweet or hurried one, a hot dish of broiled tomatoes offered color and acidity alongside eggs, chops and fish. New Orleans, with its French-inflected love of a proper morning table, took to the idea readily. That a cookbook would give the humble breakfast tomato its own separate entry shows how seriously the meal was taken.
From page 43 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
