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Tomato Omelette
Peel and chop fine one quart of tomatoes, add salt and pepper, a little onion minced fine, a half teacup grated bread. Beat five eggs to a foam, stir into the tomatoes and turn the mixture into a hot pan, greased with butter, stir rapidly till it begins to thicken. Let it brown a few minutes on the bottom, then fold it half over and serve hot. This dish may be made of canned tomatoes, when fresh cannot be obtained.--Mrs. I. G.
This is closer to a thick tomato scramble than a French omelette, and its success hinges entirely on how much water you let into the pan. A few notes before you start.
- Drain the tomatoesA quart of chopped tomatoes carries an enormous amount of juice, and if it all goes into the pan the eggs will poach rather than set. Salt the chopped flesh, let it stand in a sieve 15-20 minutes, and press out what you can.
- Quantities in modern termsOne quart of peeled, chopped tomatoes is roughly 2 lb of fresh fruit, or about four large ones. A teacup in books of this period is usually reckoned at somewhere between 4 and 6 fl oz, so a half teacup of grated bread is somewhere between a scant 1/4 cup and a scant 1/2 cup of fresh crumbs. Use stale bread grated on a box grater rather than dry packaged crumbs, which will drink too much liquid.
- Canned tomatoesThe note about canned tomatoes still holds, but drain them hard; a 28 oz tin yields well under a quart of solids once the packing liquid is gone, so you will likely need more than one. Chop them fine and blot on a towel.
- The onion"A little onion minced fine" is left to the cook; a couple of tablespoons suits these quantities. Raw onion in a dish that cooks this briefly stays sharp, so soften it in the butter for a minute or two before the egg mixture goes in if you would rather it were sweet.
- Pan and heatUse a 10-inch skillet over medium heat, well buttered. Stir only until the mass begins to set, then stop and let the bottom take colour, four or five minutes. Constant stirring past that point gives you wet curds that will not fold.
- The foldThis will not fold cleanly like a plain omelette; the tomato keeps it loose. Slide a spatula under one half, tip it over, and expect a rustic result. Serving it flat, cut in wedges, is no disgrace.
- YieldFive eggs and two pounds of tomatoes feed four generously as a supper dish, with bread and something salty alongside.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of these initialled attributions -- "Mrs. I. G." is anonymous to us. The recipe belongs to a moment when Southern cooks were putting the tomato into everything: scalloped, stewed, in soups, and here bound with egg, though the often-repeated story that the fruit had only lately shed an American reputation as ornamental and faintly suspect overstates the case, since tomatoes were widely eaten in the region decades earlier. The grated bread does the work that a roux or cornstarch might do elsewhere, absorbing juice and giving the dish enough body to fold. The casual note that canned tomatoes will serve is worth marking: commercial canning had expanded sharply after the Civil War.