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Stuffed Tomato Salad No. 1
Peel tomatoes, scoop out inside, sprinkle cavity with salt, invert and allow to thoroughly chill. Mash a small cream or Neufchatel cheese, and add one canned pimiento and two olives finely chopped, one teaspoon each finely minced onion and parsley, and salt and paprika to taste. Stuff tomatoes with mixture, and serve on lettuce with mayonnaise dressing.
A cold stuffed tomato of the kind that filled the salad course in American menu books of the 1910s-30s. The whole dish depends on the tomatoes being fully drained and cold before filling.
- PeelingDrop the tomatoes into boiling water for 15-30 seconds, then into ice water; the skins slip off. Use firm, ripe, medium tomatoes so the shells hold their shape.
- Salt and invertThe salting and inverting is not seasoning so much as drainage. Give it at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator, and blot the cavity dry before filling or the mixture will loosen and the mayonnaise will run.
- "A small cream or Neufchatel cheese"This means one of the small packaged cheeses sold at the time, on the order of 3 oz. American Neufchatel is simply lower-fat cream cheese and behaves the same way; the French Neufch\ffy-rinded Neufchâtel is a different cheese and not what is meant here.
- Softening the cheeseLet it come to room temperature before mashing, then chill the finished filling. Cold cream cheese will not take the pimiento and onion evenly.
- PimientoOne canned pimiento is a single whole roasted red pepper, drained and chopped fine, not a spoonful of the diced kind. Drain it well.
- OlivesMost likely green olives in brine. Chop fine and pat dry so the filling stays firm.
- YieldThe filling as given is enough for roughly two to four tomatoes depending on their size. Serve one per person as a first course or salad.
- DressingSpoon a little mayonnaise over each tomato just before serving rather than dressing the lettuce, which wilts quickly under it.
Stuffed raw tomatoes on a lettuce leaf were a fixture of the American salad course from about 1900 through the middle of the century, when the salad was a formal course served between courses rather than alongside them. The pattern is consistent across the period: a hollowed vegetable shell, a soft cheese or minced filling, and mayonnaise, all of which could be prepared in advance and assembled at the last minute by a cook working alone. Canned pimientos and green olives became common in American pantries in the same era and turn up constantly in these fillings, valued as much for the color they gave a pale cheese mixture as for their flavor. The numbering of this recipe suggests the book offered several variations.