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Seasonings (Lettuce leaves Mayonnaise)
Lettuce leaves Mayonnaise dressing Season stewed tomatoes more highly by cooking with them a bit of bay leaf, small slice onion, two cloves, one or two stalks celery, sprig of parsley, few peppercorns, or little paprika, and salt if necessary. Add a little water. Boil ten minutes.
Soak gelatine in one-fourth cup cold water. When soft, dissolve with hot strained tomato. (If tomato is very acid, add one-eighth teaspoonful of soda.) Pour into small cups or molds wet with cold water. When tomato is stiffened turn out on lettuce leaves. Sprinkle with chopped celery and serve with mayonnaise. Half this quantity will make four small molds. Canned tomatoes may be used. 1 Tomato Salad (with Cereal and Fish) Combine in sandwich fashion a thin slice of cold farina or cream of wheat, molded in small, round tins, with two slices raw tomato. Dispose sandwich on lettuce, place on each side a small sardine, and on top a spoonful of mayonnaise (see page 74).
Two salads run together here — a tomato aspic and a cold cereal-and-sardine sandwich salad — and the aspic's ingredient list has been lost in the transcription. Read the quantities with that in mind.
- The missing gelatine measureThe method calls for gelatine soaked in a quarter cup of cold water but never states how much. Period aspics commonly run around one tablespoon (about one envelope, 7 g) of granulated gelatine to a pint of strained liquid, which sets firmly enough to unmold, though quantities vary from book to book; the original amount is genuinely unrecoverable from this page.
- Strain before settingThe bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns and celery stalk are flavouring only and must be strained out. Add the softened gelatine to the tomato while it is still hot from the pan, off the heat, and stir until no grains remain — gelatine that meets cooled tomato will stay gritty and set unevenly.
- Do not boil the gelatineTen minutes of boiling applies to the seasoned tomato, before the gelatine goes in. Prolonged boiling after it is added weakens the set.
- The sodaAn eighth teaspoon of baking soda neutralises excess acid in very sharp tomatoes, which was a real concern with early canned goods. Modern canned tomatoes rarely need it, and too much gives a soapy, flat taste. Taste first.
- Unmoldingx
- Farina and cream of wheatBoth are wheat semolina porridges. Cook thick (roughly four parts liquid to one of cereal), press into small round tins, chill until solid, then slice. This is the same technique as fried mush or polenta, used cold.
- YieldThe aspic as written gives eight small molds; half the quantity gives four. The sardine sandwich is assembled to order, one per person.
Molded tomato aspic on a lettuce leaf with a spoonful of mayonnaise was a fashionable salad in American households from roughly the 1890s through the 1930s, following the spread of cheap packaged granulated gelatine and canned tomatoes. Here yesterday's stewed tomatoes, re-seasoned with a small bouquet of bay, clove and celery, become a dish that looks composed rather than salvaged. The companion salad — a slice of cold molded farina laid between raw tomato with sardines at the sides — pushes the same logic further, using set cereal porridge the way a later cook would use bread.