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Leland Tomatoes
in oven about half Edith E. Smith.
East Orange, N. J.
Wipe four tomatoes, pare and cut in three slices. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge generously with flour, and saute in butter, first on pepper, dredge generously with flour, and saute in butter, first on one side and then on the other.
Remove to a hot serving dish and pour over them the following sauce: 2½ T butter 2½ T flour 1 C milk Salt and pepper Melt butter, add flour and stir until blended; then add milk while stirring constantly. Bring to boiling point and season with salt and constantly. Bring to boiling point and season with salt and pepper.
Mrs. Fred Mordhorst.
Fried tomato slices under a plain white sauce — a quick skillet dish that depends entirely on how firm the tomatoes are.
- The fraction in the sauce"212 T" is 2 1/2 tablespoons: 2 1/2 tablespoons butter to 2 1/2 tablespoons flour to 1 cup milk. That is a thick medium white sauce, closer to a gravy than a pouring cream; loosen with a few extra tablespoons of milk if you want it to run over the tomatoes rather than sit on them.
- Choose underripe fruitChoose firm fruit -- Four tomatoes cut in three thick slices each hold up best if they are firm: greenish-red field tomatoes rather than dead-ripe slicers. The recipe says nothing about ripeness, but very soft tomatoes shed water in the pan and the flour coating can wash away.
- Dry the cut facesBlot the slices on a towel after salting, then flour them just before they go into the butter. Flour applied early turns to paste and slides away.
- Butter alone will scorchThe flour coating needs a hot pan and several minutes per side. Use half butter, half neutral oil, or clarified butter, and wipe the pan between batches so browned flour does not blacken.
- Cook the roux briefly"Stir until blended" means about a minute over moderate heat — long enough to lose the raw-flour taste, not long enough to color. Add the milk in a thin stream while whisking, then bring it just to a boil so the starch fully thickens.
- YieldTwelve slices serves three or four as a side dish. Sauce and tomatoes both suffer from standing, so plate them the moment the sauce boils.
Community cookbooks of the early twentieth century are full of fried tomatoes, a dish born of the same practical problem every gardener has: a glut of fruit, some of it never going to ripen before frost. Dredging the slices in flour and frying them in fat made a substantial hot vegetable course out of something that would otherwise be eaten raw or put up in jars, and the white sauce poured over the top is the standard thickened milk sauce that recurs throughout books like this one, used interchangeably over eggs, fish, potatoes and greens. The name here is more likely a place or family name than a variety of tomato; contributors commonly attached their own labels and the names of their towns to the dishes they sent in, which is why a recipe can appear beside an out-of-state address such as the East Orange, N. J. one on this page.