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Fried Tomatoes
Peel tomatoes and cut crosswise in large slices, salt and pepper, dip each slice into wheat flour, then into beaten egg, and fry at once in hot lard; serve hot. A cup of milk is sometimes thickened with a little flour and butter, boiled and poured over them. - Estelle Woods Wilcox.
A short recipe that assumes more than it says. The two things that matter are the ripeness of the tomatoes and the temperature of the fat.
- PeelingThe original assumes ripe red tomatoses peeled by scalding: 15-20 seconds in boiling water, then cold water, and the skins slip. If you use firm green tomatoes instead — the more familiar version today — skip peeling entirely, since the skin holds the slices together.
- Slice thickness"Large slices" means across the equator, about 1/2 inch. Thinner slices collapse into sauce before the coating browns.
- Salt first, then drainSalting draws water to the surface, which is what makes coatings slide off. Salt the slices, let them sit five minutes on a rack or paper, and blot before flouring.
- Coating orderFlour then egg, as written, gives a thin custardy skin rather than a crust. If you want something sturdier, follow the egg with cornmeal or fine cracker crumbs; crumb coatings appear in other recipes of the period, though not in this one.
- The fatLard is the fat called for here, and it was widely used for frying in cookbooks of this period; it is still excellent and behaves better than butter. Use about 1/4 inch in a heavy skillet, hot enough that a drip of egg sets on contact — roughly 350-365F on a modern thermometer, though the recipe specifies only "hot lard." Cook 2-3 minutes a side, once, without crowding.
- "Fry at once"This is the hinge. Battered tomato slices left standing weep through the coating and steam instead of frying. Dip and lay in the pan in one motion, one slice at a time.
- The milk gravyA cup of milk thickened with "a little flour and butter" means roughly 1 tablespoon each, cooked briefly before the milk goes in, then simmered until it coats a spoon. Season well and pour it over at the table, not in the pan, or the crust softens.
- YieldThree medium tomatoes give about a dozen slices and serve four as a side dish.
Estelle Woods Wilcox compiled and edited several of the big American subscription cookbooks of the 1870s-80s — Buckeye Cookery and then The Dixie Cook-Book — assembling contributed recipes from readers and adding her own. Fried tomatoes belong to the era when the tomato had become a garden staple: skillet-fried slices, with or without a milk gravy, turn up across Midwestern and Southern collections of the period as a way to use both the ripe glut and the hard green fruit at the end of the season. The pairing with cream or milk gravy is the same logic that governs fried chicken and fried pork chops in these books.