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Broiled Tomatoes
Cut tomatoes in halves. Sprinkle each half with salt, pepper, and fine bread crumbs, and broil five minutes. Slip on to hot platter, dot with butter, place in the oven for five minutes. Serve hot.
A four-line recipe that assumes a coal-range broiler with a hinged wire gridiron; the timings need translating for a modern overhead broiler.
- Broiler setupPosition the rack so the cut faces sit 4-5 inches below the element and preheat the broiler fully before the tomatoes go in. Cut side up throughout — the crumbs are meant to toast, not fall into the pan.
- Five minutes is shortUnder a hot modern broiler, five minutes browns the crumbs but leaves the tomato barely warmed. Expect 6-10 minutes depending on ripeness and thickness, and pull them when the crumb layer is deep gold.
- The oven stageThe second five minutes in the oven melts the butter and finishes the interior. The recipe gives no oven temperature; a moderate oven (around 350F) works, or simply return the hot platter to the turned-off broiler compartment.
- Choose firm fruitVery ripe or very large tomatoes collapse and flood the pan. Medium, firm, slightly underripe tomatoes halved across the equator hold their shape.
- Bread crumbs'Fine bread crumbs' most likely means dry crumbs from stale bread rather than the sandy commercial kind or panko. Tossing them with a little melted butter before sprinkling helps them brown evenly.
- Draw off water firstThe recipe salts and broils immediately, but salting the cut faces and letting them stand ten minutes on a rack draws out surface moisture, which can help the crumbs stay put.
- YieldTwo halves per person as a side dish; four medium tomatoes serve four.
Broiled or grilled tomatoes appear in numbers in American cookbooks of the 1880s and 1890s, which carried whole clusters of tomato recipes — stuffed, scalloped, stewed, broiled. Its presence in a chocolate manufacturer's promotional cookbook is a reminder of what such books often were: Walter M. Lowney's company published a full general cookbook, vegetables and all, with the chocolate recipes woven in, so the volume would live on the kitchen shelf rather than in a drawer.