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Baked Tomatoes
1 quart peeled and sliced tomatoes (not scalded). 1 cup sugar. 1 tablespoonful butter. 1 dessertspoonful salt. 1 teaspoonful black pepper. 1 roll of bread. Spread a layer of tomatoes on the bottom of an earthen (never a tin) baking dish. Put over it half the sugar, butter, pepper and salt, and crumble half the roll over it in small bits. Then spread another layer of tomato, sugar, etc., ending with the remaining half of the roll. Grate cracker or hard brown biscuit on top, and serve.--Mrs. S. T.
Baked Tomatoes.
Scald and peel the tomatoes, or else peel thin with a sharp knife, without scalding. Cut in small pieces, season with a little sugar, salt, pepper, and finely minced onion. Grease a baking dish and line it with thin slices of light bread buttered. Pour the tomatoes in the dish, crumming up a little light bread on them. Spread on top a layer of heavily buttered light bread, and bake.--Mrs. M. C. C.
Two versions of the same scalloped tomato dish, one sweet enough to read as a pudding, one savoury with onion. Neither gives a temperature or a time, so both need a little translation.
- Oven and timeNeither version gives a temperature or a time. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits the dish: bake uncovered 40 to 50 minutes, until the top is browned and the tomato juices have thickened rather than pooled.
- The sugar in the first versionA full cup to a quart of tomatoes gives something close to a dessert. Heavy sugaring of tomatoes was common in this period, whatever the reason; with modern fruit, 2 to 3 tablespoons is nearer the intent. Mrs. M. C. C.'s "a little sugar" is the safer guide.
- DessertspoonfulTwo teaspoons. A tablespoon of butter and two teaspoons of salt for a quart of tomatoes is reasonable; taste before committing to all the salt if using canned tomatoes, which are usually salted already.
- Earthen, never tinThis is not fussiness. Bare tinned or unlined metal reacts with tomato acid and turns the dish metallic and grey. Glass, glazed earthenware, enamelled cast iron or stainless steel are all fine.
- "1 roll of bread" and "light bread"A roll here is a plain dinner roll, roughly 2 ounces of crumb. "Light bread" means ordinary yeast-raised wheat loaf, named to distinguish it from cornbread and soda breads. About 4 ounces of stale white bread covers either version.
- Cracker or hard brown biscuitProbably a hard ship's-type biscuit or a dry rusk. Coarse dry breadcrumbs or crushed unsalted crackers do the same job; add them in the last 15 minutes if you want them crisp rather than saturated.
- Peeling without scaldingThe first recipe insists on raw-peeled tomatoes, which hold their shape better in the dish. A serrated peeler or a sharp paring knife works on ripe fruit; scalded fruit softens at the surface and gives a slightly wetter result.
- Managing the liquidFresh tomatoes at the height of the season release a great deal of juice. Let the sliced tomatoes drain in a colander for 20 minutes, or drain canned tomatoes well, or the bread will not brown.
- YieldA quart of tomatoies serves four to six as a side dish with roast or ham.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879, was assembled from the receipts of some 250 Virginia housekeepers, which is why so many entries carry only initials -- Mrs. S. T. and Mrs. M. C. C. here -- and why the same dish often appears two or three times in slightly different hands. Scalloped or baked tomatoes belong to the American habit of stretching a summer glut with bread and butter, a technique older than the tomato's respectability in the South: layered bread-and-fruit puddings were long-established, and the tomato simply slid into the pattern once it was accepted as food rather than ornament. The heavy sugaring in the first version reflects a period taste that treated tomatoes as ambiguous between fruit and vegetable, and the insistence on an earthen dish rather than tin is a reminder that acidic cooking in unlined metal was a real and familiar problem in kitchens of the time.