Tomato Salad
Select small, firm tomatoes cutting a piece from the top about an inch and a half in diameter. With a scoop spoon take out the pulp and mix the firm parts, discarding the seeds, with chopped or finely cut cucumbers, and pecans or other nuts. Fill and cover with mayonnaise.
A stuffed raw tomato, of the kind that filled the salad course on dining-car menus and at ladies' luncheons. The instructions are terse, so a few working details are worth filling in.
- Scoop spoonThis is what we would call a melon baller or a small ice-cream spade. A grapefruit spoon or a narrow teaspoon works as well for hollowing a tomato.
- Drain the shellsThe hinge of the dish. Salt the hollowed tomatoes lightly, invert them on a rack for 15 to 20 minutes, and pour off what collects. Skip this and the mayonnaise slides off in a pink puddle.
- Which tomatoesThe recipe says only "small, firm," with a top cut about an inch and a half in diameter, which points to a small slicer rather than a beefsteak. Very ripe heirlooms collapse once the interior is removed.
- "The firm parts"Estes has the solid flesh chopped and returned to the filling, discarding the seeds. Chop it small so it binds with the cucumber.
- CucumberCucumbers of this period would generally have been field varieties rather than the thin-skinned seedless types now common, so peel and seed them. Salt the dice for ten minutes and blot, or the filling waters down as it sits.
- MayonnaiseHomemade mayonnaise of this period was raw-yolk and uncooked. Good jarred mayonnaise is closer to the original in texture than most people expect; if you make your own for an uncooked dish, use pasteurized eggs.
- NutsToast the pecans and cool them completely before mixing. Add them at the last moment so they stay crisp against the wet filling.
- Yield and serviceOne tomato per person as a salad course. Set each on a lettuce leaf on a chilled plate and hold no more than an hour in the refrigerator before serving.
Good Things to Eat (1911) was written by Rufus Estes, born enslaved in Tennessee in 1857, who cooked for the Pullman Company's private cars and later for the subsidiary of U.S. Steel in Chicago — one of the earliest cookbooks published by an African American author. Stuffed raw tomatoes like this one belong to the great age of the American salad course, when mayonnaise-bound fillings served in a hollowed fruit or vegetable were a familiar elegant opening at hotel and railway tables. The combination of tomato, cucumber and pecan reflects the period's fondness for a crisp nut against something soft and cold.