Tomatoes, Stuffed
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons. -6 tomatoes of fair and even size, about 2 oz. of good forcemeat, 2 dessertspoonfuls of salad oil. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 4d.
Plunge the tomatoes for one minute in boiling water, take them out, remove the thin skin and season with pepper and salt.
Cut off a round piece at the stalk end, and with an egg-spoon, scoop out the pips.
STUFFED TOMATOES.
Fill up the space with the forcemeat, and spread the remainder thinly over the tomatoes. Over the forcemeat scatter fine raspings, and fry in the oil for about 8 minutes, or bake for 12, and brown with a salamander.
TIME. -8 to 12 minutes.
SEASONABLE in autumn TONGUE, BOILED.
A short Edwardian side dish that hinges on two things the text assumes you already know: what forcemeat is, and that the quantity given is far too small.
- ForcemeatA seasoned meat or breadcrumb stuffing, usually veal, pork or ham bound with egg and herbs. Any well-seasoned sausagemeat or a breadcrumb-and-herb stuffing works; if you use raw meat, take the filling to 165F/74C internally, which 8 minutes of frying will not reliably do on its own.
- The 2 oz is not enoughTwo ounces of forcemeat divided among six hollowed tomatoes, with some left over to spread on the outside, does not add up. Allow about 1 oz per tomato, so 6-8 oz total. The figure in the original may be a misprint or a per-tomato measure; treat it as unreliable.
- RaspingsDried breadcrumbs, traditionally made by grating the hard outside of a stale loaf. Fine dry breadcrumbs or panko are the modern equivalent.
- SalamanderA heated iron plate held over food to brown the top. Use the broiler for two or three minutes instead.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderately hot oven, around 400F/200C, suits the stated 12 minutes; too slow an oven risks the tomatoes collapsing before the crumbs colour.
- SkinningOne minute in boiling water works best on ripe fruit. Score the skin first, and drop into iced water afterwards so the flesh does not begin to cook.
- Structural pointScoop the pips out with a small spoon but leave the interior walls intact, and salt the shells briefly, then drain them upside down. Wet tomatoes shed liquid into the stuffing and go soggy.
- Frying versus bakingFrying stuffed tomatoes in two dessertspoonfuls of oil requires constant attention and they tip easily. Baking them in a dish, oiled and crumbed, is the more forgiving route to the same result.
- YieldOne tomato per person as a savoury course or a vegetable side, as the original intends. Not a main dish.
Stuffed tomatoes seem to appear in English cookery books largely from the later nineteenth century, once the tomato had shifted from a suspect curiosity to an ordinary market vegetable; Mrs Beeton's original 1861 edition treats tomatoes chiefly as a sauce or a baked accompaniment to meat, while later expanded editions give them a whole run of entries. The "seasonable in autumn" note is a reminder of how closely the English kitchen was still tied to the garden calendar, though glasshouse cultivation and imported supply had already begun to stretch the season. The dish itself belongs to the tradition of small savoury courses, customarily served after the sweet, where a single hot stuffed vegetable, browned with a salamander held over it, filled a slot in the menu that modern meals no longer have. The costing of 1s 4d for six is typical of the book's habit of pricing every dish for the household accounts.