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Tomatoes (Teaspoon salt saltspoon pepper)
6 large tomatoes 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 saltspoon pepper 1 tablespoon butter 1 cup bread crumbs 1 teaspoon chopped onion Cut a slice off the stem end of the tomato and scoop out the seeded part. Brown the onion slightly in the butter; add it to the bread crumbs, with seasoning, and fill the tomatoes with the mixture. Place them in a shallow baking pan and bake in a quick oven about thirty minutes.
A plain baked stuffed tomato, written in the shorthand of a loose-leaf card where the cook was assumed to know the rest. Two things need filling in: how much a saltspoon is, and how many tomatoes this quantity of crumbs will actually stuff.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so this calls for about 1/8 teaspoon pepper. It was a real piece of flatware, the smallest spoon in the set, sold with open salt dishes.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-450F; period sources vary. At that heat the crumbs brown well but thin-walled tomatoes can slump, so start checking at 20 minutes rather than waiting out the full thirty.
- No tomato count givenOne cup of crumbs plus a tablespoon of butter should fill roughly four medium tomatoes, or six small ones. Scale the seasoning with the crumbs, not with the tomatoes.
- Bread crumbsMost likely soft crumbs torn from day-old bread rather than the fine dry commercial kind, though the recipe does not say. Dry crumbs absorb far more liquid and will bake to sand; if that is all you have, use about two-thirds of a cup and moisten with the reserved tomato pulp.
- Scooping out"The seeded part" is the wet core. Keep the pulp, chop it, and work a little into the crumbs for moisture, but leave the tomato walls at least a quarter-inch thick or they will not hold their shape.
- Salt the shellsA light sprinkle of salt inside the hollowed tomatoes for ten minutes, then tipped out, draws off water that would otherwise flood the pan and leave the stuffing soggy.
- The panShallow is correct, but set the tomatoes close together so they brace each other. A greased pan or a spoonful of water on the bottom keeps the skins from sticking and tearing.
- ServingFour to six as a side dish. They are best within a few minutes of leaving the oven; reheated, the shells go slack.
Baked stuffed tomatoes were a common feature of American vegetable cookery by the late nineteenth century, once the tomato had become a standard summer crop. The formula here is the frugal version: no meat, no cheese, just crumbs, butter and a teaspoon of onion, the sort of dish a household made when tomatoes were abundant and stale bread was never thrown out. If the book was indeed issued as loose leaves in a binder, a format associated with cooking schools and domestic-science teaching, that would help explain the clipped telegraphic style, ingredients listed as a bare column, method in a few sentences, on the assumption that the reader had already been taught the technique and needed only the proportions.