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Tomatoes En Surprise
Peel six small equal-sized red tomatoes. Clip off the top of each and carefully scoop out the meat without disturbing the shells; season the interior with half teaspoon salt, half teaspoon sugar and two saltspoons white pepper, evenly divided, and keep them on ice until needed. Cut one stalk of crisp white celery into very small square pieces. Thoroughly wash and carefully drain, then place in a bowl, adding two good tablespoons salad dressing. Mix it well in the seasoning, add two tablespoons of mayonnaise, mix well again, then fill up the six tomatoes, place the covers on, dress on a side dish with a few leaves of lettuce around and serve. N. B. Place the scooped tomato meat into the demi-glace pot.
A cold first course of raw tomato shells filled with celery in dressing. Nothing is cooked, so the whole dish rests on the tomatoes being firm, well drained and very cold.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon — a generous amount, divided among six tomatoes. The salt, sugar and pepper are all split evenly between the shells rather than mixed into the filling.
- Peeling raw tomatoesThe book says only to peel them, without saying how. Dipping them in boiling water for 15 to 20 seconds and then into ice water loosens the skin without softening the flesh you need to hold its shape.
- Drain the shellsAfter scooping and seasoning, invert the shells on a rack or paper for ten minutes before filling. Salt and sugar draw water out, and unless it is poured off the dressing thins into a puddle on the plate.
- "Salad dressing" is not mayonnaiseThe recipe calls for both, which suggests two different things: the first was probably a cooked or boiled dressing, typically sharpened with vinegar, used to season the celery, with the mayonnaise added afterward to bind it.
- Cut the celery smallVery small squares from crisp, pale celery. Large pieces will not pack into a small tomato.
- Keep everything coldChill the shells and the filling separately and assemble shortly before serving. A mayonnaise-dressed salad sitting in a tomato at room temperature goes slack quickly.
- The demi-glace noteThe final line is a professional kitchen instruction, not part of the dish: the scooped-out pulp goes into the stockpot to enrich the brown sauce being reduced elsewhere. At home, save it for soup, sauce or a stew.
- YieldSix tomatoes, one per person, as a first course or a plated salad.
Stuffed raw tomatoes were a familiar part of hotel and restaurant cold service in the later nineteenth century, by which time the tomato was well established in American salad courses. The en surprise name signals that the outside gives no hint of the filling — the same conceit behind omelette en surprise and other dishes where one thing is hidden inside another. The closing direction to send the pulp to the demi-glace pot points to a recipe written from inside a professional kitchen, where trimmings from one station fed another; such instructions sometimes survived into volumes sold to home cooks who had no demi-glace pot at all.