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Baked Tomatoes
6 tomatoes 4 tablespoons butter Salt and pepper 1 cup bread-crums 1 teaspoon sugar Peel the tomatoes and cut them in slices one-fourth of an inch thick. Place a layer of tomatoes in a pudding-dish, and sprinkle over them a little salt and pepper. Rub the butter into the crums with the sugar. Spread the mixture thickly upon the tomatoes, using all of it, and add another layer of tomatoes. Add bits of butter, sprinkle with dry crums, and bake twenty minutes.
A simple scalloped tomato bake from the era when "pudding-dish" meant any deep ovenproof dish. The original gives no oven temperature and no yield.
- Oven temperatureNone is stated, as was normal when ranges had no thermometers. Twenty minutes implies a fairly brisk oven; something in the region of 375-400F is a reasonable modern guess, and the top should be browned before you take it out.
- Pudding-dishA deep earthenware or glass baking dish, roughly a 1 1/2-quart size. Anything that holds two layers of sliced tomato with room for the crumb topping will do.
- PeelingThe recipe calls for it, and skins are unlikely to soften in twenty minutes. Cut a shallow cross in the base, drop into boiling water for fifteen to thirty seconds, then into cold water and slip the skins off.
- Reserve some butter and crumbsButter and crumbs -- The ingredient list gives four tablespoons of butter and one cup of crumbs, and the method tells you to use all the buttered crumb mixture in the middle before calling for more butter and dry crumbs on top, so the listed quantities do not cover the topping. Either allow extra butter and crumbs for the top, or depart from the instruction and hold back about a third of both.
- Bread-crumsPeriod recipes distinguished soft crumbs from dried ones, and this one calls specifically for dry crumbs on top. Soft crumbs from a day-old loaf work well for the buttered middle layer.
- The sugarOne teaspoon across the whole dish is seasoning, not sweetening; it balances the acidity of tomatoes picked underripe or out of season. With good summer fruit you can leave it out.
- Watery resultIf your tomatoes are very juicy, salting the slices in a colander for fifteen minutes and draining them keeps the crumb layers from dissolving.
- YieldNot given; six tomatoes should serve about four as a side dish. Best eaten fresh from the oven, as the crumb topping softens on standing.