No. 2840

Tomatoes, Queen Style

Tomates a la Reine

Throw some small tomatoes an inch and three-quarters to two inches in diameter into boiling water; peel off the skins and open them on top, then take out the seeds, salt the insides and drain off all their water. Fill them with well-seasoned chicken cream forcemeat (No. 75), adding to it the same amount of cooked fine herbs (No. 385) and on top lay a channeled mushroom (No. 118), then cover with a thin bard of fat pork. Arrange the tomatoes on a buttered baking tin and set them in a moderate oven for fifteen minutes; dress in a circle and pour in the center a well-buttered supreme sauce (No. 547), adding chopped-up truffles to it.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a numbered reference system, so this reads as shorthand. Everything the recipe leans on is elsewhere in the book; here is what those numbers amount to.

Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "moderate" in this period is generally read as somewhere around 325-375F. Fifteen minutes is enough only because the tomatoes are small and the filling is a light mousseline; check that the forcemeat reaches 165F at the center before serving.
Chicken cream forcemeat (No. 75)A mousseline: raw chicken breast pounded or processed smooth with salt, then let down with heavy cream, worked cold over ice. If it warms it can break and weep in the oven.
Cooked fine herbs (No. 385)Not fresh chopped herbs but a cooked mixture, generally shallot, mushroom and parsley reduced in butter with a little wine — close to a dry duxelles. Cool it completely before folding it into the forcemeat; the recipe calls for the same amount of it as of the forcemeat.
Channeled mushroom (No. 118)A trimmed white mushroom cap with shallow curved grooves cut from center to rim with a paring knife, then blanched with lemon to keep it pale. Purely decorative; a plain small cap works.
Bard of fat porkA paper-thin sheet of fresh (unsmoked, uncured) pork back fat, cut wide enough to cap each tomato. Fatback from a butcher, sliced on a slicer or half-frozen and shaved, is the substitute. The recipe does not say so, but the bard would be lifted off before saucing; it would serve to keep the mousseline from drying and the mushroom from browning.
Supreme sauce (No. 547)Chicken velouté finished with cream and mounted with butter off the heat. "Well-buttered" means the butter goes in last, with the pan off the flame, or it splits. Truffle is stirred in at the very end so it does not lose perfume.
Draining the tomatoesThe recipe gives no time; salting the hollowed shells and letting them drain thoroughly is the step that decides the dish. Any water left inside thins the sauce and slackens the forcemeat.
YieldNo quantity is given. Figure two to three stuffed tomatoes per person as a garnish or light entrée; a pound of chicken breast made into mousseline with cream and an equal volume of duxelles will fill roughly two dozen tomatoes of this size.

A Little History

This is entry 2,840 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the numbered cross-references are the point of the book: it is a working kitchen manual, not a domestic cookbook. "À la reine" is among the standard French garnish names of the period and generally signals a dish built on white chicken meat in cream, usually with a suprême sauce and truffle; the same logic gives us bouchées à la reine and potage à la reine. The tomato here is treated purely as a vessel, and by the 1890s it had arrived in the grand repertoire mainly as a case, a purée or a garnish rather than a thing served on its own merits.