Home › Vegetables › Scalloped Tomatoes
Scalloped Tomatoes
Skin fresh tomatoes and cut them into slices; if using the canned vegetables, drain off the juice, using only the pulp. Place a layer of the tomato in the bakingdish, add a seasoning of salt and pepper, then a thick layer of bread crumbs. Cut one teaspoon of butter into tiny pieces and lay on the bread crumbs, then add another layer of the tomato and so proceed until a sufficient quantity has been prepared, having the bread crumbs for the top layer. Dot this top with butter and bake one hour in a moderate oven. Serve without removing from the dish. Cheese grated and added to these layers is sometimes liked.
TOMATOES À LA CRÊME-Peel and slice four tomatoes.
Simmer in their own juice with butter, pepper, salt and a teaspoon of sugar. This will correct the acidity but not make them taste in the least sweet. Mix a tablespoon of flour and a cup of cream. Stir into the tomatoes a tiny bit of soda, then add the cream. When thickened pour over slices of toast and serve.
Two recipes run together here: a layered baked tomato dish and a creamed tomato on toast. Neither gives quantities for the scallop, so treat it as a method and scale to your dish.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F. A full hour at that heat suits a deep dish built from firm fresh tomatoes; if your dish is shallow or you are using canned pulp, 35-45 minutes is enough to set the layers and brown the top.
- Quantities for the scallopFor a 2-quart dish, figure about 2 lb fresh tomatoes (or two 14-oz cans, drained) and 2 to 2 1/2 cups crumbs, in three or four alternating layers. That serves four to six as a side.
- "A thick layer of bread crumbs"These are dry crumbs from stale bread, not the fine sandy commercial kind, which turn to paste. Coarse torn crumbs or small cubes hold their structure through an hour of steaming tomato.
- ButterOne teaspoon per layer is meagre by modern taste. Use a tablespoon dotted over each crumb layer and a little more on top, or the crumbs will simply absorb tomato juice and go sodden.
- Draining canned tomatoesDo this seriously and press the pulp lightly in the strainer. Excess liquid is the reason scalloped tomatoes come out soupy. The reserved juice is worth keeping for soup.
- The soda in Tomatoes a la CremeThe pinch of soda neutralises acid so the cream will not curdle when it hits hot tomato. It works, but overdo it and you get a soapy, faintly metallic taste and grey colour. A scant pinch for four tomatoes is the whole allowance.
- Thickening that sauceWhisk the tablespoon of flour into the cold cream until smooth before it goes near the pan, then add it off the boil and bring back gently. Four tomatoes and a cup of cream feeds two or three over toast.
- CheeseThe suggested grated cheese is a good idea in the layers rather than only on top, where it can brown hard during a long bake. A dry cheese such as Parmesan or an aged Cheddar is best.
Scalloping a vegetable meant baking it in layers with buttered crumbs, a technique American cookbooks applied to oysters, potatoes, corn and tomatoes alike through the nineteenth century; the word is generally traced to the shell-shaped dishes such mixtures were once baked in. That the recipe offers canned tomatoes as an equal alternative to fresh is worth noticing: commercially canned tomatoes were by then among the cheaper and more reliable year-round vegetables in the American pantry. The companion recipe's pinch of soda was a common period fix for creamed tomato soups and sauces, which can turn granular when acid meets dairy over heat.