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Eggplant, Sacramento
Cut in halves lengthwise three very small even-sized, sound eggplants, and with a small pointed knife make a few criss-cross incisions in meat without touching skins, place on a tin, then set in oven--cut side up--to bake for thirty minutes, remove and with a Parisian potato scoop take out the meat without disturbing skins. Finely chop meat and place in a bowl, adding one ounce finely chopped, lean raw ham, one ounce chopped, cooked beef tongue, one bean chopped garlic, two peeled, finely chopped red tomatoes, half a teaspoon finely chopped parsley, three tablespoons bread crumbs, two egg yolks, half gill cream, one teaspoon salt and three saltspoons white pepper. Thoroughly mix with wooden spoon until well amalgamated, evenly divide preparation in the six half shells, sprinkle a little bread crumbs over, arrange a few little bits butter on top of each, evenly divided, place on a tin, set in oven for fifteen minutes, remove, dress on a dish over a folded napkin, decorate with a little parsley greens and serve.
A straightforward stuffed eggplant in the Delmonico manner, written for cooks who already knew what heat to use. The measurements need translating and the oven needs a number.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given for either stage. Both the initial 30-minute bake and the 15-minute finish suit a moderately hot oven, 400F. The first bake should leave the flesh fully collapsed and soft; if it is still firm, the scooping step will tear the skins.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 4 tablespoons. With two yolks and three tablespoons of crumbs this is a loose, spoonable filling rather than a stiff one.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons is three-quarters of a teaspoon of white pepper for six small halves. That is assertive by modern taste; start with half and adjust.
- "One bean chopped garlic"Filippini's standing unit for garlic, meaning a piece about the size of a bean, roughly one small clove. It is not a whole head.
- Parisian potato scoopA melon baller. A teaspoon works as well, and cuts less deep, which matters because the skins are the serving vessel and must stay intact.
- Lean raw hamNot fresh pork. In period usage this means a dry-cured ham eaten uncooked, so prosciutto or a lean country ham. It will be cooked through in the second bake regardless.
- Beef tongueCooked, sliceable tongue is still sold at butchers and Latin and Jewish groceries, usually pickled or plain-boiled. An ounce is a small dice, there for depth; smoked ham or a little mortadella stands in without changing the character much.
- Watery fillingThe chief risk. Baked eggplant flesh plus two chopped tomatoes releases a lot of liquid. Squeeze or drain both before mixing, or the shells bake into soup and the crumb topping never browns.
- YieldSix halves from three very small eggplants: three servings as a light main, six as a first course. The folded napkin under the dish is standard period presentation for this kind of service.
This comes from Alessandro Filippini's The International Cook Book, published in 1906 by a longtime chef of Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the house habit of hanging an American place name on a French-technique dish. Sacramento carries no discernible connection to California cooking here; the naming was a menu convention of the era, much like the Delmonico dishes labelled Portugaise or Bordelaise, and gave a kitchen a way to catalogue dozens of near-identical preparations. What is genuinely of its period is the filling: an ounce each of raw cured ham and cooked tongue, the kind of small-quantity charcuterie a large professional larder always had on hand. The stuffed half-shell is a form the vegetable takes across several cuisines, from Turkish karn y arık to Proven cal aubergines farcies.