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Corn in Tomato Cups
6 tomatoes 1 sweet pepper 1/2 teaspoon salt pepper 1 1/2 cups corn 2 tablespoons shortening Scoop centers from tomatoes. Scrape corn from cob, either raw or cooked. Add other ingredients and fill into the tomatoes. Bake in hot oven (400 degrees) for 30 minutes in a well greased shallow pan. Serves 6.
A stuffed-tomato side that depends almost entirely on the tomatoes holding their shape for half an hour in a hot oven. Choose firm fruit and drain the shells, and the rest is assembly.
- Tomato shellsUse firm, meaty tomatoes of roughly equal size and scoop out the seeds and pulp, leaving a fairly thick wall. Salting the insides lightly and inverting them for a quarter of an hour before filling draws off some water and helps the shells keep their shape in the pan.
- Oven400F as printed, which was a hot oven by the standards of the book. No preheat is mentioned; preheat fully, or the tomatoes stew rather than roast.
- Corn quantity1 1/2 cups of kernels is roughly two to three medium ears. Raw corn is preferable here since it has the full 30 minutes to cook; already-cooked or canned corn (drained) will be soft by the end, which is acceptable but not as sweet.
- The sweet pepperOne sweet bell pepper, seeded and chopped fine. Cut it small, roughly the size of the corn kernels, or it stays crunchy while everything around it is tender. A brief softening in the shortening first improves the flavor and costs nothing.
- ShorteningHere that means lard or a solid vegetable shortening. Butter works and tastes better; melt it and stir it through the filling rather than leaving lumps.
- Pepper, unmeasuredThe list gives salt at 1/2 teaspoon and then simply "pepper" -- black pepper to taste, which for this quantity of filling means a generous few grinds.
- PanA shallow greased pan is right, but set the tomatoes close enough to brace one another. A muffin tin or individual ramekins will hold them upright if the fruit is soft-shouldered.
- ServingSix, one apiece, as a vegetable course alongside a roast. They are best warm rather than hot, when the shells have firmed slightly.
Stuffed vegetables were popular on the American company table because they solved a presentation problem: they arrived at the plate already portioned, already garnished, and looking like more effort than they were. Corn and tomatoes are a natural late-summer pair in the United States, both at their peak in the same weeks, and the sweet pepper joins them as a third garden crop of the same season. The instruction to scrape corn "either raw or cooked" is a small sign of the household economy behind the book -- leftover boiled corn on the cob had somewhere to go.