Tomato Salad
Scald and peel firm tomatoes, cut a thin slice from the stem end, and remove the seeds and some of the pulp. Sprinkle the inside with salt, invert, and leave until needed. Mix chopped nuts with an equal quantity of cold cooked asparagus tips and one-half the quantity of finely cut celery moistened with dressing and a teaspoon of chopped chives. Serve on lettuce with French dressing.
A stuffed raw tomato with no quantities given at all — the proportions are relative, so scale to the number of tomatoes you have. Two points matter: draining the shells properly and dressing the filling only at the last minute.
- QuantitiesThe filling is described as ratios: equal parts chopped nuts and cooked asparagus tips, half that quantity of celery. For four medium tomatoes, about 1/2 cup nuts, 1/2 cup asparagus tips and 1/4 cup celery fills them with a little to spare.
- Scald and peelThirty seconds in boiling water, then straight into cold water, and the skins slip off. Firm, slightly underripe tomatoes hold their shape as shells; a dead-ripe one will collapse once hollowed.
- The salting step is the hingeSalting the cavity and inverting the shells draws out water that would otherwise thin the dressing into a puddle. Give them at least 20 minutes on a rack or in a colander, and blot the insides dry before filling.
- NutsThe kind is not specified; walnuts, pecans or almonds would all suit. Toasting them briefly is not in the original but keeps them from going soft against the wet filling.
- Asparagus tipsCold cooked tips means boiled or steamed until just tender and cooled, not canned mush. Two to four minutes for thin spears, then an ice bath to hold the colour.
- "Dressing" versus "French dressing"The filling is moistened with an unspecified dressing — in American books of this period that often meant a boiled or mayonnaise-type dressing, though it may simply mean more of the French dressing — while the plated salad gets French dressing, meaning simply oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, not the sweet orange bottled kind.
- Timing and yieldFill within an hour of serving; the shells weep and the nuts soften if held longer. One tomato per person as a first course or lunch salad.
Stuffed raw tomatoes were a fixture of American salad courses from the 1890s through the 1930s, when the salad was expected to arrive as a composed, individually portioned object on a lettuce leaf rather than tossed in a bowl. Meatless cookbooks multiplied in the years around the First World War, when meatless days were promoted first by vegetarian and health reformers and then by wartime food conservation campaigns. Asparagus tips suggest a recipe intended for a company lunch rather than everyday family cooking, though that is an inference.