Home › The World's Kitchen › Tomatoes for Side Dish
Tomatoes for Side Dish
Remove the stems and neatly wipe three small, sound red tomatoes and slice into medium-sized pieces; dress on a hors d'oeuvres dish, qour two tablespoons dressing lightly over them; mix and serve.
A three-line salad that depends entirely on the tomatoes and the dressing, neither of which the original bothers to specify. A few notes on filling in the gaps.
- "qour" is a typoRead it as "pour two tablespoons dressing lightly over them."
- Which dressingThe recipe names none. A plain French dressing, commonly given in the period as something like three parts oil to one of vinegar with salt and pepper, is the likeliest intention. Two tablespoons is little for three tomatoes; the point is to gloss them, not to pool in the dish.
- Hors d'oeuvres dishA shallow, small serving plate. Any small flat plate does the same job.
- YieldThree small tomatoes serve two as a first course or side, or one generously. Scale by counting one small tomato per person.
- Salt first, dress secondSliced tomatoes benefit from a light salting a few minutes ahead so they release some juice and season through. Drain off what collects before adding the dressing, or the vinaigrette will be diluted.
- "Small, sound" mattersWith no cooking, no herbs and barely any dressing, the dish is a straight test of the fruit. Use ripe tomatoes at room temperature; refrigerated ones will taste of nothing here.
- Dress at the last momentOnce acid meets cut tomato the slices soften and weep. Mix and serve as written rather than letting the plate stand.
Raw sliced tomato dressed with oil and vinegar becomes common in English-language cookbooks over the nineteenth century, as the tomato established itself as a summer staple in American gardens; the story of a long-standing fear of it as a poisonous nightshade is often repeated but is more tradition than documented fact. Its placement here among the hors d'oeuvres follows French practice: a course of small cold dishes at the start of a meal, which could include plain dressed vegetables. Compilations of short entries of this kind, drawn from hotel and restaurant cooking, were common in the period, and often assumed a cook who already knew how to make a French dressing.