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Deviled Tomatoes
Mash the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs, mix with them one saltspoonful of salt, one teaspoonful each of powdered sugar and made mustard, and as much cayenne pepper as will lay on a five-cent piece, and rub in three ounces of butter, warmed until it is very soft. When these are well mixed stir in by degrees three tablespoonfuls of vinegar, put the mixture into a pan over the fire, and let it get almost boiling hot; remove it from the fire and stir in two well-beaten eggs, return it to the fire and stir it until it begins to thicken; then stand in hot water on the stove to keep warm. Take about one quart of firm ripe tomatoes, cut them into slices not quite one-half inch thick, broil them over a clear fire, place them on a hot chafing-dish, pour the hot sauce over them, and serve.
A warm mustard-and-egg sauce, essentially a devilled hollandaise thickened with whole egg, poured over grilled tomato slices. The sauce is the whole difficulty; the tomatoes are straightforward.
- The hinge: never let the sauce boilOnce the beaten eggs go in, the mixture curdles above roughly 180F. Cook it in a bowl set over barely simmering water rather than directly on the burner, and pull it the moment it coats the spoon. The instruction to "stand in hot water on the stove" is the original's own insurance against this.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. The salt is modest because the mustard and vinegar carry most of the seasoning.
- "As much cayenne as will lay on a five-cent piece"A nickel-sized pinch, in practice about an eighth of a teaspoon. Start lower if your cayenne is fresh; heat is meant to be present but not dominant.
- Made mustardMustard already mixed with liquid, not dry powder. Any smooth prepared mustard will serve; the recipe does not specify a type.
- Three ounces of butterSix tablespoons, softened almost to the point of melting so it emulsifies with the yolk paste rather than sitting in lumps. For a quart of tomatoes this yields a generously rich sauce; two ounces makes a sharper one.
- VinegarThree tablespoons is a good deal of acid for the volume, and it is what keeps the sauce from tasting like plain buttered egg. Cider or white wine vinegar suits it.
- Broiling the tomatoes"A clear fire" means coals without flame or smoke. A hot grill or an oven broiler at full heat works; give the slices two to three minutes a side so they color and soften without collapsing. Choose firm fruit rather than fully soft, as the recipe specifies.
- Chafing dish and yieldThe chafing dish here is a serving vessel kept warm over a spirit lamp, not a cooking pan. A quart of tomatoes is roughly two pounds and serves four as a side or savory course; sauce and tomatoes should be plated and eaten immediately, as the sauce will break if held long.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection catches the moment when the chafing dish was the fashionable centerpiece of late-night suppers and hotel-style home entertaining in New York, and "devilled" anything — meaning sharpened with mustard, cayenne and vinegar — was among its stock repertoire. The term is often traced to English cookery, where devilling meant heavily spiced grilling, usually of bones, kidneys or leftover poultry, though the culinary sense is only sparsely attested before the nineteenth century; applying it to a vegetable, with a warm egg emulsion standing in for the usual dry rub, is the sort of adaptation a large hotel kitchen made constantly. Tomatoes had been in common American use for roughly half a century by the 1890s, and appeared confidently in hotel menus fresh, broiled and stewed. The sauce itself is a close cousin of the hollandaise and béarnaise family that French-trained kitchens had brought to New York, here built on hard-boiled yolks rather than raw ones, a method that gives a more forgiving emulsion and is said to have turned up in period cookbooks.