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Peeled and Curried Tomatoes
Cut four large tomatoes into rather thick slices. Saute them in one and one-half tablespoons of butter. When nearly cooked sprinkle with one teaspoon of curry powder, one tablespoon of flour, one teaspoon of finely chopped onion, a dash of salt and pepper. At the last minute add one cup of cream, let it boil up and then strain over the tomatoes served on buttered rounds of toast.
A quick sauté-and-cream-sauce dish from the era when creamed vegetables on toast were a standard light supper. It comes together in under fifteen minutes, and most of the decisions are made in the last two.
- The peeling the text forgetsThe title promises peeled tomatoes but the method never says to do it. Drop them in boiling water for 15-20 seconds, then into cold water, and the skins slip off before slicing; otherwise the skins curl away from the flesh in the pan and end up as tough ribbons in the sauce.
- Cut thickHalf-inch slices at minimum. Thin slices collapse into pulp before they colour, and the whole point is to serve the tomato as a distinct round on the toast.
- Cook the curry powder and flourThe instruction to sprinkle them on "when nearly cooked" is the hinge. Give both a good half-minute in the butter before the cream goes in — raw curry powder tastes dusty and raw flour tastes of paste, and neither has time to correct itself once the liquid is added.
- Curry powder of the periodCommercial curry powders of this era were generally milder and more turmeric-forward than a modern hot blend, though composition varied by maker. A modern hot Madras blend at one teaspoon will likely read considerably sharper against a cup of cream; start with three-quarters of a teaspoon if your blend is assertive.
- Cream'Cream' in American recipes of this period usually meant something lighter than modern heavy cream, nearer to light cream or half-and-half. Heavy cream will work but gives a much thicker sauce with a tablespoon of flour behind it; thin with a splash of stock or milk if it tightens too far.
- "Let it boil up"One good bubble is what is meant — enough to cook out the flour and thicken. Held at a boil, a cream sauce with acidic tomato in the pan can break or curdle.
- StrainingThe sauce is strained over the tomatoes, which removes the onion and any curry grit and leaves a smooth coating. If you would rather keep the onion, skip the strainer and mince it very fine.
- YieldFour large tomatoes and a cup of cream serve four as a light lunch or first course, two if it is the whole meal. Toast the bread and butter it just before serving — it goes soggy fast under the sauce.
Creamed vegetables on toast rounds were common in American household cookery from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s: cheap, fast, filling, and suitable for the lunch and supper tables that a formal dinner menu left unaccounted for. The curry powder is the period detail. Commercial curry blends had been sold in Britain since the late eighteenth century and were available in the United States over the course of the nineteenth, used not for Indian cookery so much as a general seasoning dropped into cream sauces, egg dishes and soups — a habit generally traced to the Anglo-Indian table and passed on through British cookbooks. The tomato, meanwhile, had shed much of its earlier suspicion in American kitchens during the nineteenth century, and by the time recipes like this one were being printed it was common enough to be treated as an everyday vegetable rather than a curiosity.