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Baked Tomatoes
Choose six large tomatoes, cut slices off the stem ends and with your finger carefully scoop out the seeds. Mix together a half cup of finely chopped, cold boiled ham, twelve chopped mushroons, two heaping tablespoonfuls of stale bread crumbs, tablespoonful of chopped parsley, onehalf teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper, and a tablespoonful of butter. Fill the tomatoes with this mixture, heaping it in the centre. Sprinkle over the tomatoes with bread crumbs, place them in a baking-pan, baste with melted butter. Bake in a hot oven thirty-five minutes. When done, take them up carefully and serve on a flat dish.
These make a fine garnish for baked calves' heads.
A straightforward stuffed tomato that needs only a few translations, most of them about heat and moisture.
- "A hot oven"In books of this period that means roughly 425-450F. At that heat thirty-five minutes will collapse most modern tomatoes into the pan; 400F for 25-30 minutes gives a filling that browns and a tomato that still holds its shape.
- Drain the shells firstThis is the hinge. Once the seeds are scooped out, salt the cavities lightly and stand the shells upside down for 15-20 minutes. Skipping this gives you a pool of tomato water under a sodden stuffing.
- Twelve mushroomsNo size is given; twelve small white button mushrooms would come to roughly 4 oz, which is a reasonable reading. Chop and cook off their liquid in a dry or lightly buttered pan before mixing, otherwise they release it into the filling during baking.
- Stale bread crumbsCrumbs torn from day-old bread, coarse and soft, not the fine dry canister sort. Dry commercial crumbs absorb far more moisture and will make the stuffing pasty; use fresh-torn crumbs and add a little more if the mix seems loose.
- The tablespoonful of butterWork it in cold and crumbled rather than melted, so it stays in small pieces and enriches the filling as it bakes. The melted butter for basting is separate, and about 2 tablespoons is enough for six tomatoes.
- Cold boiled hamLeftover ham from a boiled joint. Any good cooked ham works; a thick-cut deli slice diced fine is closest. It is already salted, so taste before adding the full half teaspoon of salt.
- Pan and supportUse a dish just large enough that the tomatoes touch and prop each other up, or set them in a muffin tin. Loose in a wide baking-pan they slump sideways as they soften.
- Yield and servingSix tomatoes, so six as a side or three as a light supper dish. The suggested use as a garnish for baked calves' head is not a serving proposition anyone need follow; they sit perfectly well beside roast meat or on their own with a green salad.
Stuffed and baked tomatoes appear in English and American cookery from the later nineteenth century onward, as the tomato moved from ornamental curiosity to a staple of the summer kitchen garden. The filling here -- chopped mushrooms and ham bound with crumbs rather than sauce -- is of a familiar type. The closing line is the giveaway that this book still has one foot in the older world. Baked calves' head was a formal dinner dish that needed colour and height around it on the platter, and a ring of stuffed tomatoes did that job. The dish outlived the garnish.