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Macaroni in Tomato Cases
Prepare several large tomatoes, cutting a slice off top and scraping out the inside pulp. Season the cases with salt and pepper, and fill with cooked macaroni. Over the top sprinkle buttered crumbs.
Bake in a hot oven until the crumbs are brown and the tomatoes are partially cooked, but not long enough for them to lose their shape. The tomato pulp may be used for making soup or sauce.
A thrift dish that assumes you already have cooked macaroni sitting in the icebox. The whole thing turns on how long the tomatoes stay in the oven.
- Hot ovenBooks of this period generally reckon a hot oven at roughly 400-450F; no temperature is given here. The upper end suits the dish: you want the crumbs browned before the tomato walls slump.
- TimingExpect 15-20 minutes at 425F for medium tomatoes. Pull them the moment the crumbs colour; a tomato case that has gone soft will collapse when lifted from the pan.
- Choosing tomatoesLarge, firm, slightly underripe fruit holds its shape. Beefsteak types work; very ripe heirlooms will weep and fall apart.
- Salt and drainAfter scraping out the pulp, salt the interiors and invert them on a rack for 10-15 minutes. The original says only to season, but draining the shells keeps the macaroni from turning to soup.
- Buttered crumbsFresh soft breadcrumbs tossed with melted butter, roughly a tablespoon of butter to a half cup of crumbs. Dry commercial crumbs scorch before the tomato has warmed through.
- The macaroniLeftover macaroni is stiff and bland by the second day. Loosen it with a spoonful of cream, cheese sauce or the reserved tomato pulp before filling, and season it as well as the shells.
- Support in the panBake the cases in a muffin tin or a snug baking dish so they cannot spread. The recipe itself specifies no pan.
- YieldThe recipe says only "several large tomatoes"; reckon one per person as a side, two as a light supper dish. Best served straight from the oven, as the cases slump on standing.
Stuffed tomato cases were a common feature of American cookery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by which time the tomato's older reputation as suspect had long faded. The appeal was partly visual: a hollowed tomato gave a shapely, individual serving at a time when household cookbooks were increasingly concerned with how a plate looked, not merely what was on it. Macaroni was cheap, cooked in quantity and dull the second day, and cookbooks of the period often advised reworking it rather than discarding it. The final line, sending the scooped pulp on to soup or sauce, is the spirit of the genre: nothing leaves the kitchen unused, and one economy feeds the next.