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Stuffed Tomato Salad II
Prepare tomatoes same as for Tomatoes Stuffed with Pineapple. Refill with finely cut celery and apple, using equal parts. Serve with Mayonnaise, and garnish with shredded lettuce.
Stuffed Tomato Salad (German Style) Prepare tomatoes same as Tomatoes Stuffed with Pineapple. Shred finely one-half a cabbage. Let stand two hours in salted water, allowing two tablespoons salt to one quart water. Cook slowly thirty minutes one-half cup each cold water and vinegar, with a bit of bay leaf, one-half teaspoon peppercorns, one-fourth teaspoon mustard seed, and six cloves. Strain, and pour over cabbage drained from salt water. Let stand two hours, again drain, and refill tomatoes.
Two variations on a hollowed-tomato salad, both leaning on an earlier recipe in the same chapter. The German-style filling is essentially a quick spiced-vinegar slaw, and the timing matters more than anything else here.
- The cross-reference"Prepare tomatoes same as for Tomatoes Stuffed with Pineapple" — points to a preparation given earlier in the book and not repeated here; such directions generally involve peeling the tomatoes, cutting a slice from the stem end, scooping out pulp and seeds, and draining the shells. Draining matters: undrained shells weep onto the plate.
- Plan four hours aheadThe cabbage version needs two hours in brine and two more in the spiced vinegar, plus time for the tomatoes to chill. Nothing about it is quick, but all of it can be done the day before and held covered in the refrigerator.
- The brine is strongTwo tablespoons of salt to a quart of water is roughly a four percent brine, meant to wilt the cabbage and draw out water rather than to season it. Drain it well and taste before the vinegar goes on; a brief rinse is reasonable if it reads as salty.
- The spiced vinegarHalf a cup each of water and vinegar cooked slowly for thirty minutes will reduce noticeably. Use a lid and the lowest heat, and top up with a little water if you are left with much less liquid than you started with. Cider vinegar suits the spicing.
- Whole spices onlyPeppercorns, mustard seed and cloves go in whole and are strained out. Six cloves in a cup of liquid is assertive by current taste, so four is defensible if you dislike a clove-forward pickle.
- MayonnaiseThe book means a made-from-scratch mayonnaise built on raw yolk. Commercial mayonnaise, thinned with a spoonful of cream or lemon juice, is the practical substitute and closer in consistency to what the recipe expects.
- YieldHalf a shredded cabbage produces far more filling than a few hollowed tomatoes will take. Either scale the cabbage down or plan to use the surplus as a slaw.
- ServingBoth versions are cold dishes and should go out on chilled plates. The shredded lettuce is a bed and a garnish, not a dressed salad; cut it in fine ribbons and keep it dry.
Stuffed tomatoes were a common feature of American salad courses around the turn of the twentieth century. Cookbooks of the period give whole runs of them, each with a different filling, because the salad course was judged largely on presentation: a composed, self-contained portion that arrived at the table already arranged. The "German style" label points to the sweet-sour cabbage tradition — the brine-then-spiced-vinegar treatment here is a quicker relative of the pickling and krauting methods associated with German-American kitchens.