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Tomatoes En Ragout
Plunge four good-sized, red, sound tomatoes in the boiling water for one minute, lift them up, skin, cut them into quarters; place in a small saucepan, with half an ounce butter, three saltspoons salt, two saltspoons white pepper, three saltspoons sugar, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and half a bean of finely chopped garlic; lightly mix, place on the fire, cover the pan and let cook for ten minutes. Remove, pour into a deep dish and serve.
A plain stewed-tomato side dish that depends entirely on the fruit: four ripe summer tomatoes, skinned and briefly cooked. The measurements are in old kitchen spoons, which is the only real obstacle.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So the seasoning works out to about 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon white pepper and 3/4 teaspoon sugar. The pepper is assertive by modern taste; start with half and adjust.
- Half an ounce butterOne tablespoon. Professional books of this period commonly gave butter by weight rather than by spoon measure.
- A bean of garlicA clove. 'Bean' here appears to render the French gousse (pod, hence clove), and half a clove finely chopped is all that is meant — this is a background note, not a garlic dish.
- SkinningOne minute in boiling water is enough only if the tomatoes are properly ripe and the water is at a full boil; a quick plunge into cold water afterwards makes the skins slip more easily. Underripe tomatoes will need longer and are not worth using here.
- The covered ten minutesCovering traps the juice, so the quarters half-stew rather than reduce. If your tomatoes are very watery, finish the last few minutes uncovered so the liquid tightens; the dish should be glossy, not soupy.
- Don't stir it to pieces"Lightly mix" is the instruction that matters. The point is quarters that hold their shape, so move them once at the start and then leave the pan alone.
- YieldFour tomatoes gives two to four small servings as a vegetable alongside meat or eggs. It reheats poorly — the quarters collapse — so cook it to order.
The phrasing suggests the kitchen this came from: en ragout, a "bean" of garlic for a clove, seasoning counted in saltspoons — French professional practice written out for an English-reading household, a common pattern in cookery books of this kind. Ragoût usually implies a slow-cooked stew, most often of meat, so applying the term to a ten-minute vegetable is a mild stretch, though French labels were often attached to simple dishes on period menus. Tomatoes had become common in Anglo-American cooking by the later nineteenth century, and by the time this book was compiled they were plentiful enough in summer to be treated casually; the instruction to choose them "red, sound" is simply a call for ripe, unblemished fruit.