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Stuffed-Tomato Salad
INGREDIENTS. 6 smooth, small-sized tomatoes. 6 tablespoonfuls of chicken, veal or tongue, cut fine. 6 tablespoonfuls of peas. 3 olives, chopped fine. 3 gherkins, chopped fine. 2 tablespoonfuls of capers.
Salt and pepper.
Mayonnaise dressing.
Method.- Remove a round piece from the stem end of the tomatoes and scoop out the seeds and centre. Chill thoroughly. When ready to serve, mix together the solid part removed from the tomatoes, cut fine, and the other ingredients; season to taste with salt and pepper, adding also mayonnaise to hold the mixture together. With this fill the tomatoes, put them in nests of lettuce or cress, and force a star of mayonnaise on the top of each tomato.
A cold composed salad of the kind that filled the luncheon pages of turn-of-the-century American cookbooks. Nothing here is difficult, but a few of the assumptions behind it are no longer standard.
- Drain the shellsThe one step the recipe omits: after scooping, salt the insides lightly and invert the tomatoes on a rack for 20-30 minutes before chilling. Otherwise they weep into the filling and the mayonnaise slackens on the plate.
- PeasThe original assumes cooked green peas, either fresh-shelled or canned. Frozen peas, thawed and patted dry, are the closest modern equivalent; do not use them straight from cooking water.
- TongueBeef or veal tongue was a common cold cut in 1900 and is still sold at butchers and delis, usually pickled or braised. Cold roast chicken or a firm cooked veal is the easier substitute, cut in a neat small dice rather than shredded.
- GherkinsIn a book of this date this most likely means small sour pickled cucumbers rather than the sweet gherkins sold in American supermarkets. Sweet pickles will throw the balance of the dressing.
- CapersTwo tablespoonfuls is a lot against six small tomatoes. Rinse and drain them, and taste the mixture before adding salt at all -- capers, olives and gherkins between them carry most of the seasoning.
- Forcing a starThis means a piping bag with a star tip. The mayonnaise has to be stiff enough to hold the shape, which a thin or store-bought dressing will not do; a homemade mayonnaise beaten to a firm emulsion, well chilled, will.
- Raw egg in the dressingHomemade mayonnaise is uncooked egg yolk. Use pasteurised eggs if serving anyone pregnant, elderly or immunocompromised, and keep the assembled salad refrigerated until it goes to the table.
- YieldSix stuffed tomatoes -- a first course or a light luncheon plate for six, or a main salad for three with bread.
This comes from Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties, one of the small single-subject manuals that proliferated in America around 1900 as gas ranges, iceboxes and the chafing dish reshaped what a household could put on the table without a cook. The stuffed tomato was a signature of that moment: it needed refrigeration to be pleasant, it used up cold cooked meat, and it looked composed and deliberate on a plate at a time when ladies' luncheons were a fixed social form. The mayonnaise piped into a star is the tell -- a small piece of professional pastry technique borrowed into domestic cookery, of a piece with the era's fondness for aspics, moulds and garnished platters.