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Curried Tomatoes
1 quart of stewed or canned to- 1 cup of rice, matoes, 1 teaspoonful of curry powder, Salt and pepper to taste.
Wash the rice through several waters. Add the powder and salt to the tomatoes, mix well. Put one layer of tomatoes in the bottom of a baking-dish, then a layer of uncooked rice, and then another layer of tomatoes, rice, and so continue, having the last layer tomatoes. Sprinkle the top with bread crumbs. Place a few bits of butter here and there, and bake in a moderate oven forty-five minutes. Serve in the dish in which they were baked. A layer of okra may also be added, and is a great improvement. This makes a nice accompaniment to roasted fowl.
A layered tomato-and-rice casserole from the era when curry powder was a single generic blend sold by the grocer. The hinge is liquid: a quart of tomatoes is barely enough to hydrate a cup of raw rice, and the dish depends on a covered pan and long, steady heat.
- Ingredients as written1 quart stewed or canned tomatoes, 1 cup rice, 1 teaspoon curry powder, salt and pepper, bread crumbs and butter for the top. Optional okra layer.
- A moderate ovenRoughly 350F; period usage for "moderate" spans about 325-375F. Forty-five minutes is the original's own timing.
- Liquid and riceOne cup of raw long-grain rice needs roughly two cups of liquid. A quart of canned tomatoes with their juice is about four cups, though much of it is pulp. The original gives no instruction to cover the dish, and the buttered crumb topping suggests it baked uncovered; if the top layer looks dry at the halfway mark, add water or stock, or cover loosely until the last stretch.
- Which riceThe recipe says only "rice"; plain white rice is the likely intention. Do not substitute parboiled or converted rice, which behaves differently, and avoid brown rice, which will still be hard after 45 minutes.
- Washing the rice"Through several waters" means rinsing until the water runs clear, which removes loose surface starch and keeps the layers from turning gluey.
- Curry powderA single teaspoon in a quart of tomatoes reads as faintly warm rather than curried by present-day standards. Taste the seasoned tomatoes before layering and adjust then, since you cannot season it later.
- OkraUse fresh or frozen cut okra, added as its own thin layer. It will release some liquid, which helps the rice.
- YieldServes four to six as a side dish in a 2-quart baking dish. Let it stand ten minutes off the heat so the rice finishes absorbing.
Curry powder reached American home cooking in the nineteenth century largely as a ready-made grocery blend rather than a set of individual spices, and cookbooks of the period used it much as they used mace or celery salt: a teaspoonful to lift an otherwise plain dish. That is its role here, in a vegetable casserole built on two cheap staples. The recipe also reflects a moment when canned tomatoes had become reliable enough to be offered as an equal alternative to stewed fresh ones. The okra variation and the suggestion to serve the dish alongside roast fowl may echo the Southern habit of cooking tomatoes and okra together, though the recipe itself says nothing of its origin.