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Whole Tomato Salad
For each guest, wash and dry I nice solid tomato, cut a slice from the stem end, remove the pulp with the fingers; chop fine some pineapple, orange, banana, or any variety of fruit, fresh or canned, and I small sweet green pepper; mix the fruit, and fill it into the tomato; on top of this (if the flavor is liked) put 2 slices of cucumber, placing them on the ice until thoroughly chilled; at serving time place each tomato on a lettuce leaf, cover the top with rich cream, French, or mayonnaise dressing; serve with unsweetened crackers as an accompaniment.
A stuffed-tomato salad of the sort that filled the salad chapters of household books a century ago. Nothing here is difficult, but a few of the assumptions need translating.
- The hinge: drain the tomatoOnce the pulp is scooped out, salt the shell lightly and invert it on a rack for 15-20 minutes. Otherwise the tomato weeps into the fruit filling and the dressing slides off.
- "Remove the pulp with the fingers"A grapefruit spoon or teaspoon does it more cleanly. Keep the pulp for a soup or sauce rather than discarding it.
- Sweet green pepperThis meant a green-stage sweet pepper, which in this period was likely smaller and thinner-walled than a modern supermarket bell. Half a bell pepper, finely diced, is probably closer to the intended quantity than a whole one.
- Canned fruitCanned fruit of this period was commonly packed in syrup. If you use canned fruit, drain it well and blot it; fruit in juice or fresh fruit gives a less cloying result.
- BananaCut it last and toss it with a little of the orange juice, or it will brown before the salad reaches the table.
- "Rich cream" dressingMost likely plain heavy cream, sometimes sharpened with lemon and seasoned, though period "cream dressings" could also be cooked dressings enriched with cream. A thin mayonnaise loosened with cream is the nearest familiar equivalent.
- "Placing them on the ice"The icebox, not literal ice cubes. Refrigerate at least an hour; these are meant to be served thoroughly cold.
- Yield and crackersOne tomato per person, as stated. "Unsweetened crackers" are plain water crackers or soda crackers -- the point is that nothing on the plate competes with the fruit.
Stuffed and "whole" tomato salads were everywhere in American cookery between about 1890 and 1930, when cheap salad courses were being promoted to households on a budget. The fruit-and-mayonnaise combination looks odd now, but it belongs to a well-documented period taste for sweet salads dressed with cream or boiled dressing, the same impulse that produced the perfection salad and the endless variations on fruit in gelatin. A tomato, a lettuce leaf and whatever fruit was in the cupboard made a course that looked like a restaurant plate for very little money, and the recipe is careful to make the cucumber optional to taste rather than an essential purchase.