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Tomatoes for Eggs, Omelettes, Etc
Select six medium, red, fresh but not too ripe tomatoes, plunge them in boiling water for one minute, lift them up with a skimmer, then with a towel carefully skin them. Trim off the stems and cut them into even quarters. Heat a teaspoon melted butter in a small saucepan, add two sound, peeled, finely chopped shallots and gently brown them for half a minute, then pour in one and a half tablespoons white wine, lightly mix, add the tomatoes with half a teaspoon freshly chopped parsley. Season with a level teaspoon salt, half a teaspoon sugar and two saltspoons white pepper, lightly mix, cover the pan and let cook for twelve minutes, carefully stirring once in a while. Mix on a saucer a teaspoon butter with half a teaspoon flour, then add it to the tomatoes, gently mix, and the tomatoes will be ready to use as directed.
This is not a dish in itself but a tomato garnish built to sit under or alongside eggs — what a French kitchen would call a fondue de tomates. It is finished with a butter-and-flour paste rather than long reduction, so the timing at the end is what matters.
- The hinge: the beurre maniéThe teaspoon of butter kneaded with half a teaspoon of flour must be worked into a smooth paste on the saucer before it goes in, then stirred through off a hard boil. Dropped in dry or lumpy it will leave pale flour specks, and the whole point of it is to bind the tomato juice so the garnish does not flood the eggs on the plate.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is generally reckoned at a quarter teaspoon, so this calls for about half a teaspoon of white pepper. That is assertive by current taste for six tomatoes; a quarter teaspoon, with more added at the end, may suit better.
- Tomatoes "not too ripe"Deliberate. Firm, slightly underripe fruit holds its quarters through twelve minutes of covered cooking, where dead-ripe tomatoes collapse into sauce. Modern hothouse tomatoes are usually firm enough; if using fully ripe summer fruit, cut into sixths and check at eight minutes.
- PeelingOne minute works best with the water at a rolling boil, and scoring the base first helps the skin start. A cold-water dip after lifting them out stops the flesh cooking and can make the skin slip more cleanly than wrestling it with a towel.
- Shallots and the half minute"Gently brown" for thirty seconds means soften and take the raw edge off, not colour. Chopped shallot in a teaspoon of butter will scorch quickly; keep the heat moderate, since burnt shallot is the one flavour that cannot be hidden here.
- White wineA tablespoon and a half is a seasoning quantity; the tomatoes go in right behind it and the pan is covered, so little of it cooks away. Use something dry -- the half teaspoon of sugar is already balancing the tomato's acid, and a sweet wine will push it over.
- The pan"Small saucepan" here should be wide rather than deep, and non-reactive. Twelve minutes covered in a narrow pot steams the tomatoes in their own liquid; a shallow pan lets enough water go off that the final binding actually thickens something.
- YieldSix tomatoes gives roughly two cups, enough to garnish six or eight poached or shirred eggs, or to fill and top two three-egg omelettes.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and The International Cook Book (1906) reflects that: recipes written as components, cross-referenced to be used "as directed" somewhere else in the book. This entry is a professional's building block. The instruction to use tomatoes "fresh but not too ripe" is a reminder that in 1906 a New York kitchen still worked with whatever the market sent, and canned tomato, though widely available by then, would not have served a preparation in which the quarters are meant to hold their shape. The butter-and-flour finish, rather than a long reduction, lets a cook bind a garnish to order in seconds during service.