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Tomatoes, Marseillaise
Cut six fresh red tomatoes in halves crosswise, season them with one teaspoon salt, one teaspoon sugar and half teaspoon pepper. Place on a plate a finely chopped boiled egg, half teaspoon each chopped parsley and chervil, half a bean chopped garlic and two chopped anchovies in oil. Mix all well together, arrange the tomatoes on a buttered tin cut side up, evenly divide the hash over the tomatoes, sprinkle a little bread crumbs over, lightly baste with a little melted butter, set in the oven for fifteen minutes, remove, neatly dress them on a dish and serve.
A Provençal stuffed tomato in miniature: no oven temperature is given, and the seasoning is written for a period palate that salted generously.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given. Fifteen minutes suggests a fairly hot oven; something in the region of 400F suits tomato halves this size, since much cooler and the crumbs may not colour before the tomatoes collapse.
- "Half a bean chopped garlic"A garlic "bean" is most likely a single clove, so this probably means half a small clove — a whisper rather than a flavour note. If your garlic is large, a quarter of it is closer to the intent.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh outside spring farmers' markets. Substitute a mix of parsley and a few tarragon leaves rather than dried chervil, which tastes of hay.
- The egg"Boiled egg" here means hard-boiled and cooled, chopped fine enough to bind with the anchovy oil. One egg is the intended quantity.
- AnchoviesTwo oil-packed fillets, not two whole tins' worth. Drain them but reserve a little of the oil to loosen the mixture, and hold back most of the salt until you have tasted — a teaspoon on top of anchovy is a great deal.
- Draining the tomatoesChoose firm tomatoes, and after halving and salting let them sit cut side down for ten minutes. Otherwise the released juice pools in the tin and the crumb topping steams instead of crisping.
- "Hash"Simply the chopped stuffing mixture. Divide it among twelve halves — it will be a thin layer, which is correct.
- YieldTwelve halves, serving six as a first course or as a garnish for grilled meat or fish.
The label Marseillaise in a turn-of-the-century restaurant kitchen was shorthand for the flavours of the Provençal coast — garlic, anchovy, olive oil, tomato — and it appears attached to fish, eggs and vegetables throughout the French professional repertoire of the period. This dish is essentially a small tomates à la provençale, dressed up with hard-boiled egg and anchovy so it could be sent out as a course rather than a side. Its presence in a book called The International Cook Book reflects how such collections were assembled: a chef trained in the French system catalogued regional French dishes alongside Italian, German and American ones, using the regional adjective as a filing system for a set of ingredients rather than a claim about any particular Marseille household.