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Tomatoes with Scrambled Eggs
10 A few spoonfuls of stewed tomato may be mixed with eggs and scrambled. Beat eggs slightly with a fork, season, and mix with tomato. Melt in hot omelet-pan half a tablespoonful of butter, pour in eggs and tomato, and cook lightly, holding pan away from the intense heat. Pour over prepared toast or crisp triscuit. A full tablespoonful of tomato for every two eggs is a good proportion, but more may be used.
A left-overs formula rather than a fixed recipe: the proportion given is one tablespoon of stewed tomato per two eggs, and the technique is all in the heat control.
- The hinge: low heat"Holding pan away from the intense heat" is the whole instruction. On a coal range that meant lifting the pan off the hot plate; on a modern burner keep it at low to medium-low and pull it off entirely for the last few seconds, since the eggs finish cooking in the pan.
- Stewed tomatoThis means cooked tomato, not raw tomato or thin canned juice; it may well be a left-over from a previous meal, though the recipe does not say so. If starting fresh, cook chopped tomatoes until they hold their shape in a spoon; watery tomato will weep and can give curdled, greyish eggs.
- Omelet-panA shallow, heavy, well-seasoned pan with sloping sides. A nonstick or seasoned cast-iron skillet does the same job. Half a tablespoon of butter is enough for two or three eggs in a pan of that kind.
- Beat slightlyDeliberate wording. A few strokes with a fork leaves streaks of white and gives a softer, curdier result than a fully homogenised beat.
- SeasonSalt and pepper is what is meant.
- TriscuitThe cracker existed when this was written and still does, though the version the author had in mind was a larger shredded-wheat wafer than today's. Any sturdy cracker or buttered toast serves.
- YieldTwo eggs and a tablespoon of tomato makes one modest breakfast serving over one or two pieces of toast. Scale by pairs of eggs and do not crowd more than five or six eggs into one pan.
This is a page from the era when a cookbook's job included accounting for every spoonful left in the pantry, and the tomato here is the point: stewed tomatoes were a staple side dish in American households through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cooked in quantity and served plain, so a cupful of leftovers was a routine problem. Combining them with eggs puts the dish in the same family as Basque piperade and Spanish and Mexican egg-and-tomato scrambles, though nothing suggests direct borrowing; it is more likely arrived at independently by anyone with eggs and a bowl of cooked tomato. The mention of triscuit as an alternative to toast dates the book neatly to the years after shredded-wheat crackers reached grocery shelves, when a branded cracker could be named in a recipe without explanation.