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Stuffed Tomatoes (Saucepan stew slowly a half)
saucepan, stew slowly a half hour, then add one tablespoonful of butter, one teaspoonful of sugar, one teaspoonful of onion juice, and a palatable seasoning of salt and pepper. Stew twenty minutes longer or until the desired thickness. If liked, a slice of onion may be added to the tomatoes when they first go over the fire. Thickening of any sort spoils the flavor of the tomatoes.
This page picks up mid-recipe — the opening line naming the tomatoes and their preparation is missing, so treat what survives as the finishing method for a pan of stewed tomatoes rather than a complete formula. Despite the title, nothing here is stuffed; the text is the stewed-tomato entry that would have sat nearby.
- What is missingThe lost first line would have named the tomatoes and their preparation; period entries of this kind generally begin with scalded and peeled fresh tomatoes or canned ones with their juice. No quantity survives on this page, so any amount you use is a guess.
- Stew slowly means lowA bare simmer rather than a boil. The text does not say whether the pan is covered, but since body is meant to come from reduction, leaving it uncovered follows. Half an hour on the lowest workable setting before the butter and sugar go in.
- The hinge"Thickening of any sort spoils the flavor" is the whole point of the entry. Body comes only from reduction, so resist flour, cornstarch or breadcrumbs and simply keep the pan on the heat until it mounds slightly on a spoon.
- Onion juiceA period shortcut: a halved onion pressed against a coarse grater, or grated onion squeezed in a cloth. A teaspoon of juice is about what half a small onion yields. Finely grated onion works, though it leaves texture the original avoids.
- SugarOne teaspoonful is a corrective for acidity rather than a sweetener; the page gives no tomato quantity to scale it against, so taste before adding it all.
- Total time and yieldAbout 50 minutes on the stove by the recipe's own two stages, longer if the tomatoes are watery. No yield is given in the surviving text.
- ServingStewed tomatoes were commonly served over toast or alongside roast meat in this period. Note that the recipe itself seasons at the midpoint, not at the finish.
Stewed tomatoes were a fixture of American cookery from the mid-nineteenth century onward, helped along by canneries that made tomatoes a year-round vegetable. Cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries differ over thickening: some add breadcrumbs, cracker crumbs or flour to give the dish body enough to sit on toast, while others insist on reduction alone. The flat closing sentence of this entry takes the second position. Onion juice in place of chopped onion was a common device of the period.