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Boiled Eggplant
Peel the eggplants, cut them into moderate-sized pieces, put them into a saucepan of boiling water with a lump of salt, a pinch of parsley, and an onion stuck with two or three cloves, and boil them until tender. Prepare the following sauce: Put one ounce of butter into a small stewpan with one-third tablespoonful of flour, and mix it over the fire; then stir in a small bottle of tomato sauce, and keep on stirring until boiling, seasoning to taste with salt and pepper. When cooked, drain the eggplant, place them on a hot vegetable dish, pour the sauce over, and serve while very hot.
A plain boiled vegetable dressed with a quick tomato-thickened butter sauce. The only real risk is overcooking: eggplant goes from tender to waterlogged mush in a matter of minutes.
- Boiling timeOscar gives none. Peeled 1½-inch chunks are tender in about 8 to 10 minutes at a gentle boil. Test with a knife tip the moment they lose their opacity; past that they collapse and drink up water.
- "A lump of salt"An unmeasured cook's amount, and probably more than a pinch. Assuming 3 to 4 quarts of water, about a tablespoon of salt seasons the flesh as it cooks.
- The onion stuck with clovesThis is an oignon cloute, a standard flavouring for a poaching liquid. Peel a small onion, press two or three whole cloves into it, and lift it out with the parsley before draining.
- "A small bottle of tomato sauce"Genuinely ambiguous. In an 1890s American kitchen this most likely means bottled tomato catsup or a commercial tomato sauce, probably thinner and sharper than a modern pasta sauce; the bottle size is not recoverable. About a cup of plain tomato passata with a splash of vinegar is a reasonable stand-in.
- The rouxOne ounce of butter (two tablespoons) to a third of a tablespoon of flour is a very light binding, not a thick sauce. It is there to keep the tomato from separating; cook it a minute before the tomato goes in so it does not taste of raw flour.
- Drain properlyBoiled eggplant holds water. Let it sit in the colander a full minute, and warm the serving dish, or the sauce will thin into a pink puddle.
- Peeling and saltingModern eggplants are bred with far less bitterness than those of Oscar's day, so pre-salting is optional. Peeling still matters here, as boiled skin turns leathery.
- YieldTwo medium eggplants with this quantity of sauce serve four as a side dish.
Eggplant is often said to have been still faintly exotic in American home cooking when Oscar Tschirky compiled his book in 1896, associated with French, Italian and Creole kitchens rather than the general table, though it had been grown and cooked in America, especially in the South, well before the 1890s. Boiling it and masking it with a tomato sauce bound by a light roux is straightforwardly French service-kitchen practice, the same treatment given to salsify, cardoons and other vegetables thought to need help. The instruction to reach for "a small bottle of tomato sauce" is a small piece of period evidence in itself: by the 1890s bottled tomato products were available to a hotel kitchen of the Waldorf's standing, though the recipe alone cannot tell us how often such a kitchen would open one rather than reduce tomatoes from scratch for a vegetable garnish.