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Broiled Tomatoes
Cut the tomatoes into halves but do not peel. Place them on a broiler, dust with salt and pepper, and broil over a clear but very moderate fire skin side down, about twenty minutes until tender. When done, put them on a heated dish, pour over melted butter and serve with slices of crisp toast.
This is grilling over coals, not oven broiling — the "broiler" is a hinged gridiron and the "clear fire" is a bed of embers with no flame or smoke. That distinction governs the whole twenty-minute timing.
- Broiler means gridironSet the halves skin side down on a grate over glowing coals at moderate heat, or cook them cut side up under an oven broiler on a low rack. Under a modern gas or electric element on high they will scorch on top long before the flesh softens.
- A clear fireCoals burned down past the flaming stage, grey at the edges and glowing beneath. The recipe's "clear" fire means no flame and no smoke; the skin acts as the cooking vessel and wants steady radiant heat rather than licking fire.
- Twenty minutes is not a misprintSkin side down over gentle heat, the tomato half slumps and concentrates rather than collapsing. Rushing it at high heat gives a charred base and a raw, watery centre. Under an oven broiler on a low rack, reckon 12 to 20 minutes depending on ripeness and size.
- Choose the tomatoFirm, slightly underripe fruit of even size holds its shape best. Fully ripe summer tomatoes weep and may need draining cut side down on paper for ten minutes first. The recipe names no variety.
- Melted butterThe recipe gives no quantity; something like 2 tbsp for four tomatoes, poured over at the last moment on a warmed dish, works. It is the sauce, so browning it lightly is within the spirit of the thing.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. Reckon two halves per person as a vegetable side, so four medium tomatoes for four with the toast.
Broiled tomatoes belong to the long Anglo-American tradition of cooking things on a gridiron over coals, and they turn up often in late nineteenth and early twentieth century vegetable cookery. Anglo-American kitchens were slow to take up the tomato, and the notion that it was a suspect nightshade is much repeated, though how widely that belief was actually held is disputed; by the time books like this one were written the fruit was ordinary enough to be treated as plainly as a mushroom -- halved, salted, cooked in its own skin and dressed with nothing but butter. The instruction not to peel is the practical heart of it: unpeeled halves hold together on the bars, where a skinned one would sag and break up.