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Stuffed Tomatoes
Some sweet corn Cream Salt and onion juice A little chopped red pepper A few dashes Worcestershire sauce A little lemon juice Have the tomatoes of uniform shape and size, wash and dry them, cut a round piece from the stem end of each.
Cut some tender sweet corn from the ears and set to heat with a little cream, salt, Worcestershire sauce, a few drops of onion juice, and a little chopped red pepper. Scoop out the seeds from the tomatoes. Fill the tomatoes with the corn, lay them on a buttered fireproof dish, and bake until they are tender. Serve with a little melted butter and lemon juice put over each one.
An ingredient list without a single measurement, which was normal for vegetable cookery in 1912. The proportions are forgiving; the two things worth getting right are the corn's cooking time and the tomatoes' drainage.
- QuantitiesNothing is measured in the original. For six medium tomatoes, figure on the kernels from three ears of corn and about 1/4 cup of cream, plus a teaspoon of Worcestershire and a squeeze of lemon at the end.
- Do not cook the corn throughThe corn heats in cream only long enough to warm and thicken slightly, then finishes inside the tomato. Simmering it to doneness on the stove first gives you starchy, collapsed kernels after baking.
- "A little chopped red pepper"'chopped' points to a fresh sweet red pepper or canned pimiento rather than cayenne, though in period cookbooks 'red pepper' can also mean cayenne. If you want heat, that is your own addition.
- Onion juiceGrate half an onion on a box grater and squeeze the pulp in your hand or through a sieve. It gives onion flavour without raw pieces, which is the point of using juice rather than mince.
- Fireproof dishAny shallow ovenproof earthenware or ceramic baker. The instruction distinguishes it from ordinary china, which would crack; a modern gratin dish or pie plate is fine.
- Drain the shellsAfter scooping out the seeds, salt the insides lightly and invert the tomatoes for ten minutes. Otherwise the released liquid thins the cream filling and floods the dish.
- Oven and timeThe original says only to bake until tender and gives no temperature; 350F for 20 to 30 minutes will get you there, until the tomatoes give to gentle pressure but still hold their shape. Past that they slump and the filling escapes.
- YieldOne tomato per person as a side dish, two as a light lunch course. The lemon-butter goes over at the table, not in the oven.
History: Stuffed tomatoes belong to the wave of American vegetable cookery that followed the tomato's long, uneven acceptance over the nineteenth century; by 1900 cookbooks could assume a household would find good ones cheaply in late summer, which is also when this recipe makes best sense, since it wants both ripe tomatoes and corn tender enough to cut raw from the cob. Corn and tomato baked together reads as an American pairing, and the Worcestershire sauce is a familiar period shortcut to savoury depth in a meatless dish. Its presence in a book of casserole cookery is of a piece with the enthusiasm for fireproof earthenware in the years before the First World War, when such baking dishes were promoted as both economical and handsome enough to carry from oven to table.