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Mother's Sliced Tomatoes
Prepare half an hour before dinner, scald a few at a time in boiling water, peel, slice, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, set away in a cool place, or lay a piece of ice on them. Serve as a relish for dinner in their own liquor. Those who desire may add vinegar and sugar.
A dressed raw tomato salad from the era before refrigeration, when "a cool place" meant a cellar or a lump of ice. The method is sound and needs almost no translation.
- Scalding and peelingDropping tomatoes into boiling water for 20-30 seconds, then into cold water, loosens the skin so it slips off. Scoring an X at the blossom end first makes it easier. Do only a few at a time, as instructed, so none of them sit in the hot water and start to cook.
- The half hour mattersSalt draws liquid out of the flesh, and that liquid is the dressing — "their own liquor." Thirty minutes is enough for a good pool without the slices collapsing; several hours and they turn slack and watery.
- Ice directly on the foodThe original lays ice on the tomatoes, at a time when harvested ice was commonly used in table service. Chill the bowl in the refrigerator instead; melting ice only dilutes the liquor.
- Vinegar and sugarFor 4 to 6 tomatoes, start with a tablespoon of cider vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar, added after the salting so the juices have already drawn. Adjust to the fruit — a mid-season tomato needs less sugar than an underripe one.
- Choice of tomatoThis depends entirely on fruit at full ripeness; a firm supermarket tomato yields little liquor and less flavour. A large, ripe slicing tomato suits the method, though the recipe specifies no variety.
- YieldReckon one large tomato per person as a side relish. The recipe gives no thickness; around 1/2 inch holds up better than thin slices, which soften quickly once salted.
Sliced tomatoes salted and served in their own juice appear repeatedly in late nineteenth-century American cookbooks, often as a summer "relish" rather than a salad in the modern sense — something acidic set on the table alongside heavy meat dishes. The Dixie Cook Book appeared in the 1880s, adapted for a Southern readership and drawing on contributed receipts, and the affectionate title suggests a family formula rather than a printed standard. By this period the tomato was thoroughly established in American kitchens and eaten raw in quantity; the older reputation for suspicion is often overstated, and it had been a common garden vegetable for decades. Whether it wanted vinegar and sugar was clearly a matter of taste, which is presumably why the last sentence leaves the choice to the cook.