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Stewed Tomatoes
Mrs, Saulter.
Put ripe tomatoes into hot water and skin them; then throw them into an earthen stew pan, (a new tin will do, but not so good); cut up and let the tomatoes cook gently a few minutes; season with butter, pepper, salt, and serve.
Or you may add bread crumbs and sugar to the tomatoes if preferred. Some cooks stew tomatoes for a long time, but the flavour is finer if allowed to simmer but a few moments, just sufficient time to heat well through.
A two-ingredient side dish whose whole argument is against overcooking. Mrs. Saulter's instruction to simmer only a few moments is the point of the recipe, not an aside.
- The hinge: cook brieflySkinned ripe tomatoes need only two to five minutes over gentle heat, long enough to heat through and release some juice. Long stewing dulls the fresh acidity and turns the flesh to pulp, which is exactly what the recipe warns against.
- Skinning themScore a shallow cross in the base, drop into boiling water for 20 to 30 seconds, then into cold water. The skins slip off. Very ripe fruit may not even need the boiling water.
- Earthen pan, and whyTomatoes are acidic, and nineteenth-century tinned ironware corroded and gave a metallic taste once the thin tin coating wore through. Hence the preference for glazed earthenware. Use stainless steel or enamelled cast iron; avoid bare cast iron, aluminium and unlined copper.
- "Cut up"Quarter or roughly chop the peeled tomatoes. Coring out the tough stem end is worth the extra minute.
- Seasoning proportionsThe original gives none. For about 2 lb of tomatoes, a tablespoon of butter, half a teaspoon of salt and a few grinds of pepper is a reasonable starting point, added at the end so the salt does not draw out more liquid than you want.
- The bread crumb variationA thicker style, closer to scalloped tomatoes. A handful of dry crumbs and a teaspoon or two of sugar will bind the juice and take the edge off underripe fruit. With good summer tomatoes it is unnecessary.
- YieldTwo pounds of tomatoes, roughly six medium fruit, serves four as a side. They reduce more than you expect once the juice runs.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in 1877 by "ladies of Toronto and other cities and towns," and is generally credited as Canada's first community fundraising cookbook, sold in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children; the contributors' names attached to each receipt, like Mrs. Saulter here, were part of the appeal. Stewed tomatoes appear in many North American household books of the period, and a glut of ripe tomatoes in August had to be dealt with somehow. The insistence on an earthen pan rather than tin is a small window on the era's cookware: acidic foods and thinly tinned iron were a known bad match, and cooks were repeatedly told so.