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Stuffed Tomatoes with Olives
For each two tomatoes prepare the following: 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 small onion finely chopped 4 tablespoons dried bread crumbs 1/2 cup seeded ripe olives Remove the stem from sound tomatoes and scrape out the pulp. Sprinkle the inside of the tomatoes with salt. Add the pulp and seasoning, and cook five minutes; then add the olives and bread crumbs. Put the mixture in the tomatoes, cover with bread crumbs, and bake.
The instructions assume a cook who can fill in the gaps: the butter and onion are meant to be softened together before the pulp goes in, and no oven temperature or time is given at all. Both are easy to supply.
- The unwritten first stepMelt the tablespoon of butter, soften the chopped onion in it for a few minutes, then add the reserved pulp and seasoning and cook the five minutes specified. That cooking is what drives off the tomato water so the filling does not slump.
- Oven and timeBake at 375F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the shells are tender but still holding their shape and the crumb topping has browned. Tomatoes past that point collapse and flood the dish.
- Salt and drainAfter scraping out the pulp and salting the interiors, stand the shells upside down for ten minutes and pour off what collects. The salt will draw out some liquid as well as season, though the recipe does not say which was intended.
- Ripe olives"Ripe olives" in an American book of this period generally means canned black olives, mild rather than sharply salty. Modern canned black olives are the closest equivalent; oil-cured or kalamata olives are much stronger, so use less than the half cup called for if you substitute.
- CrumbsDried bread crumbs of this period were usually made at home from stale bread and left unseasoned, rather than the fine commercial kind. Four tablespoons per two tomatoes plus a topping layer is enough; more turns the filling pasty.
- Dot the toppingThe crumb cover browns poorly on its own. A little extra butter over the top, or a light toss of the crumbs in melted butter first, gives the crust the recipe implies.
- YieldScale as written, two tomatoes at a time. Two stuffed tomatoes make one main-dish serving in a meatless meal, or one apiece as a side. Medium round tomatoes hold their walls better than large beefsteaks.
Meatless Cookery belongs to a broader body of American meatless cookbooks, whose motives ranged from dietetic and health reform to wartime economy. Books of this kind lean heavily on eggs, cheese, nuts, beans and - as here - vegetables made substantial by a stuffing, the aim being to give a plate its familiar center without a chop on it. The half cup of seeded ripe olives points to California's canned ripe olive trade, which is generally said to have grown through the early twentieth century; the olives are valued in recipes like this for supplying the fat and savory bite that the missing meat would otherwise have provided.