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Tomatoes Stuffed with Cucumber
Peel five tomatoes, cut off the stem ends and scoop out the pulp, thus forming cups; set, turned upside down, in a cool place. Chop fine the solid pulp from the tomatoes and one cucumber, chilled before chopping; stir into a cup of cream dressing and fill the tomatoes with the mixture. Salt and pepper will be needed in addition to that in the dressing. If at hand, a pimento may be chopped with the other ingredients, or two tablespoonfuls م of grated horseradish may be used. Serve at once on lettuce leaves.
A cold stuffed-tomato salad from the era when "cream dressing" meant a specific thing off another page of the book. The whole dish depends on keeping the water out.
- Cream dressingA period cream dressing is generally either a cooked dressing thickened with flour or egg and finished with cream, or an uncooked cream-and-vinegar mixture; it is not whipped cream. Check the book's own dressing chapter. Mayonnaise loosened with a spoonful or two of heavy cream is the closest quick substitute; a cup is about 240 ml.
- Drain everythingThe hinge of the dish. Salt the hollowed tomato shells lightly and leave them inverted to drain, and press the chopped pulp and cucumber in a sieve before dressing them. Undrained, the filling turns to pink water within minutes.
- Seed the cucumberPeel, halve and scrape out the seeds before chopping, or the filling will be watery no matter how well drained.
- PimentoA sweet red pepper. If using the canned or bottled sort, drain and blot it; chop fine either way so it reads as flecks of colour rather than chunks.
- HorseradishTwo tablespoons of freshly grated horseradish is assertive; bottled prepared horseradish should be squeezed dry first, and start with half the amount since it is already vinegared.
- "Serve at once"Take this literally. The shells soften and weep once filled, so hollow and chill the tomatoes ahead, mix the filling ahead, and combine them as the plates go out.
- YieldFive tomatoes, so five servings as a first course or a lunch salad alongside sandwiches.
Stuffed raw tomatoes were a fixture of American ladies' luncheons from the 1890s onward, by which time the tomato was a fashionable salad vegetable. The appeal was partly visual: chilled service, lettuce leaves and a bright red cup that needed no cooking suited the summer table and the new taste for cold, composed salads bound with cooked or mayonnaise-style dressings. The recipe's casual reference to "a cup of cream dressing" points the reader to the dressing chapter.