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Tomatoes Stuffed with Pineapple
Peel medium-sized tomatoes. Remove thin slice from top of each, and take out seeds and some of pulp. Sprinkle inside with salt, invert, and let stand one-half hour. Fill tomatoes with fresh pineapple cut in small cubes or shredded, and nut meats, using two-thirds pineapple and one-third nut meats. Mix with Mayonnaise Dressing, garnish with Mayonnaise, halves of nut meats, and slices cut from tops cut square. Serve on a bed of lettuce leaves.
Stuffed Tomato Salad I Peel medium-sized tomatoes. Remove thin slice from top of each and take out seeds and some of pulp. Sprinkle inside with salt, invert, and let stand one-half hour. Fill tomatoes with cucumbers cut in small cubes and mixed with Mayonnaise Dressing. Arrange on lettuce leaves, and garnish top of each with Mayonnaise Dressing forced through a pastry-bag and tube.
Two variations on the same shell: a hollowed raw tomato salted and drained, then filled and dressed. The whole dish depends on getting the water out of the tomato before anything goes in.
- The half hour inverted is the hingeSalting and draining pulls out enough juice that the mayonnaise stays thick rather than sliding off in a pink pool. Skipping it, or cutting it to ten minutes, is what ruins this salad. Blot the cavity dry with paper towel before filling.
- PeelingThe book gives no method; the usual one is to dip the tomato briefly in boiling water, then into cold water, after which the skin slips off. Firm, slightly underripe tomatoes hold their shape far better once hollowed.
- Fresh pineapple and mayonnaiseFresh pineapple contains bromelain, a protein-digesting enzyme, which can loosen an egg-based mayonnaise if the salad stands. Dress and serve promptly, or use canned or briefly cooked pineapple if the salad has to sit.
- "Nut meats"Shelled kernels, nothing more. The recipe does not specify a variety; walnuts or pecans both work, and toasting them lightly is an improvement the original does not mention.
- Mayonnaise DressingThe cross-reference is to the book's own uncooked mayonnaise, built on raw yolks. If you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised, use pasteurized eggs or a commercial mayonnaise thinned with a little lemon juice.
- The pastry bag garnishFor piping, the mayonnaise needs to be stiff and cold. A star tube and a chilled bowl of dressing straight from the refrigerator will hold a rosette; room-temperature mayonnaise will slump.
- Yield and servingOne tomato per person as a first course or luncheon salad; a medium tomato hollowed this way takes roughly a third to a half cup of filling. Assemble no more than an hour ahead and keep chilled.
This kind of cookbook reached its widest audience just as the stuffed-tomato salad was becoming a fixture of the American ladies' luncheon, and this pair of recipes shows the form at its most typical: a raw vegetable used as an edible cup, a bound mayonnaise filling, a bed of lettuce, and a piped flourish on top. The pineapple version reflects a genuine novelty of the period, since fresh pineapple had only recently become a reliable market item in northern cities through faster steamship traffic from the Caribbean, while canned pineapple, including the Hawaiian crop, was arriving in quantity in the same years. Combining fruit, nuts and mayonnaise struck the era as elegant rather than odd, and the same instinct runs through the whole family of fruit-and-nut salads. The insistence on a pastry bag and tube is worth noticing too: it suggests a fairly well equipped kitchen and a cook comfortable with the technique.