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Broiled Tomatoes
Wipe and cut in halves crosswise, cut off a thin slice from rounding part of each half. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs again, place in a wellbuttered broiler, and broil six to eight minutes. Tomatoes à la Crême Wipe, peel, and slice three tomatoes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and sauté in butter. Place on a hot platter and pour over them one cup White Sauce I.
Two short tomato preparations from Fannie Farmer, both assuming a coal or gas range and a hinged wire broiler. The first is a breaded tomato; the second is essentially a creamed side dish.
- "Broiler" means the tool, not the settingIn 1896 a broiler was a hinged double wire grid that clamped the food and was held over live coals or a gas flame, turned once. Under a modern overhead element the crumb coating browns but the cut faces steam rather than sear; a heavy ridged pan or a very hot cast-iron skillet gives the closer result.
- Cutting crosswiseHalve the tomato through the equator, not stem to blossom, so each half sits flat. Shaving a thin slice off the rounded side gives it a second flat face to rest on in the broiler and keeps it from rolling.
- Crumbs, egg, crumbsThe standard breading of the period: dry crumbs first to absorb surface moisture, then beaten egg thinned with a spoonful of water, then crumbs again. Tomatoes shed a great deal of liquid, so this order matters more here than with drier foods.
- Six to eight minutesThat timing suits a firm tomato. A ripe modern slicing tomato may collapse before eight minutes is up; work with firm fruit and watch it rather than the clock.
- White Sauce IFarmer's white sauce, made in the same book from butter, flour, milk, salt and pepper; take the proportions from her own White Sauce I rather than assuming a ratio. A standard béchamel of the same consistency serves.
- "Dredge with flour"Nineteenth-century usage for a light dusting from a dredger, not a heavy coating. Season and flour the slices just before they go into the pan or the flour turns to paste.
- YieldNeither version is portioned. Figure one whole tomato per person for the broiled version; the three sliced tomatoes with a cup of sauce serve four as a side.
Both of these sit in the vegetable chapter of Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, at a moment when the tomato had only recently become an unremarkable American vegetable. The story that Americans regarded it with suspicion well into the mid-nineteenth century is often repeated, though it is folklore as much as documented history; cookbooks of the 1830s and 40s did frequently call for long cooking, sometimes for hours, whatever the reason. The crumb-egg-crumb coating and the cup of thin white sauce are equally characteristic of the school-taught cookery she represented: standardized, mild, and applied more or less uniformly across the vegetable chapter.