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Plain Broiled Tomatoes
Wipe neatly and cut crosswise six firm, medium, raw red tomatoes. Season with a teaspoon salt, half a teaspoon white pepper and half a teaspoon sugar. Oil a double broiler, then arrange tomatoes on broiler and broil over a brisk fire four minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, decorate with a little parsley greens and serve.
A four-line recipe that depends entirely on equipment most kitchens no longer have. Translate the hardware first and the rest follows.
- "Double broiler" is a hinged wire basketThis is the two-sided gridiron that clamps food between wire grids so it can be flipped whole over live coals. It is not a double boiler, and it is not the overhead element in a modern oven. A hinged fish or burger basket over a charcoal grill is the direct equivalent; a ridged cast-iron pan works too, though you lose the flip.
- "A brisk fire" means high, direct heatCoals hot enough that you can hold a hand a few inches above them for only two or three seconds. Under an oven broiler set to high, put the rack close to the element.
- Cut crosswise, and cut thickCut crosswise — The recipe says only 'cut crosswise' and does not specify thickness. Read as halves through the equator, which is the most workable reading for a hinged broiler: thin slices collapse into the wires, while halves hold their shape.
- Four minutes a side is for firm fruit onlyThe recipe specifies firm tomatoes. A dead-ripe summer tomato will slump well before that time, so start checking at two minutes and pull them while they still hold together.
- Oil the grids, not the tomatoesCut tomato flesh welds itself to hot metal. Brush the wires generously before the fruit goes in, and season the cut faces just before they meet the heat so the salt does not draw out juice and steam them.
- White pepper and the sugarWhite pepper was commonly specified in this period for pale dishes where black specks would show. Black pepper is fine. The half teaspoon of sugar is not explained in the recipe; it can be dropped with sweet late-summer fruit.
- YieldSix tomatoes. The recipe gives no number of servings.
Broiled tomatoes belong to the long stretch when the gridiron was a common tool for anything cooked quickly over a hearth or range fire, and the hinged double broiler was used for delicate items that would fall apart if turned with a fork. The recipe's specification of raw red tomatoes may be a small period marker: tinned and stewed tomatoes were widely available by the early twentieth century. The dish is essentially the tomato half of a mixed grill. The pinch of sugar is a long-standing habit in kitchens where fruit ripened in cool weather rarely tasted as sweet as the recipes assumed.