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Salad in Tomato Cups
6 tomatoes 1/2 cup diced cucumbers 1 cup cut celery 1 cup diced apples 1 cup cream dressing 1 teaspoonful salt Select firm, well-shaped tomatoes. Cut off the stem, and remove the pulp. Prepare the cucumbers, celery and apples. Mix with these vegetables the tomato pulp and then with the cream dressing and the salt. Fill the tomato cups with this.
A straightforward stuffed-tomato salad from the meatless-cookery tradition. The only real technique is in hollowing and draining the tomatoes so the filling does not turn to soup.
- Drain the shellsAfter scooping out the pulp, salt the insides lightly and invert the shells on a rack or paper for 15-20 minutes. Tomatoes shed a surprising amount of liquid, and this is the difference between a filled cup and a puddle.
- Handle the pulpThe pulp goes back into the salad, but it is mostly seeds and water. Chop it, drain off the free juice, and add only the solids, or the cream dressing will thin out immediately.
- "Cream dressing"In books of this period the term often means a cooked dressing thickened with egg and flour and finished with cream or milk, though it is also used for simpler mixtures of cream with vinegar or lemon juice; it does not mean whipped cream, and it is not commercial mayonnaise. Any thick boiled dressing, or mayonnaise thinned with a spoonful of cream, stands in for it.
- Cut celeryThe recipe distinguishes "cut" celery from the diced cucumber and apple, which may point to slicing rather than dicing; sliced celery keeps some crunch against the softer apple and cucumber.
- ApplesUse a firm tart variety and toss the dice with a little lemon juice as you go, since the cut surfaces brown quickly before the dressing goes on.
- CucumbersModern supermarket cucumbers have thin skins and few seeds, so peeling and seeding is optional. If using a waxed field cucumber, peel it and scrape the seeds out.
- SaltA full teaspoon for the three and a half cups of cucumber, celery, apple and dressing plus the pulp of six tomatoes is on the assertive side by current taste, particularly if the shells have been salted as well. Add half, then correct.
- Yield and servingSix tomatoes, one per person, as a first course or a light lunch salad on lettuce. Assemble no more than an hour ahead and keep cold; the filling waters out if it stands.
Salads served in a hollowed vegetable were a fixture of American cookery from the 1890s through the 1920s, when a salad course was judged as much on its appearance on the plate as its flavour, and the tomato cup, green pepper case and scooped cucumber boat all appear in the same chapters. Such dishes suited meatless cookery: they were substantial enough to anchor a course without meat, and their cooked cream dressings, bound with egg, supplied some of the richness a meat dish would otherwise have carried. The tomato had been widely grown and eaten in America from the 1830s and 1840s onward, though it was usually cooked at length before eating, so a recipe that serves it uncooked and as the vessel marks how thoroughly it had been accepted by the time this book was written.