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April 11
Menu: Bean Soup; Globe Artichoke with Sauce Hollandaise; Stuffed Peppers Potato Straws; Fruit; Grilled Tomatoes; Pimiento Salad; Assorted Cakes; Coffee Grilled Tomatoes-Wipe tomatoes, spread little Crisco on each with a knife, and set on grill pan near to clear fire. Turn often, basting or keeping moist with Crisco. Whole tomatoes cook in 7 to 10 minutes, according to size. Sliced ones in about 5 minutes. When meat or ham is being grilled tomatoes will cook in pan underneath the grid on which meat rests.
A fragment from the book's day-by-day dinner calendar, written for a coal or gas range whose grill was a broiler slot with a pan beneath it. The method translates directly to a modern broiler or a charcoal grill.
- CriscoThe book's own product: hydrogenated vegetable shortening, still sold and still solid at room temperature. Any neutral oil or softened butter does the same job here; the point is a thin film that keeps the cut faces from drying while they colour.
- "Grill pan" and "grid"Not a ridged skillet. The grid is the broiler rack and the grill pan is the shallow tray that catches drippings, which is why tomatoes set underneath a grilling chop come out seasoned with fat.
- "Clear fire"A fire burned down past smoke and flame to steady radiant heat, or a gas grill burner fully lit and even. On a modern broiler, preheat well and set the rack a few inches below the element.
- TimingsSeven to ten minutes for whole tomatoes and five for slices still hold, but watch rather than time. A modern broiler may well run hotter than a settled coal fire, and thin slices can blister in two or three minutes.
- Turning whole tomatoesHalve them across the equator and broil cut side up instead; whole tomatoes turned repeatedly tend to split and dump their juice into the pan. If you do keep them whole, prick the skin once.
- Choose firm fruitVery ripe modern hothouse tomatoes collapse under direct heat. Slightly under-ripe or plum tomatoes hold their shape, and slices should be cut a good half inch thick.
- SeasoningThe original gives none. Salt and pepper the cut surfaces before they go under the heat.
- YieldFigure one medium tomato or two or three slices per person as a breakfast or grill-plate accompaniment.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil to introduce American cooks to Procter & Gamble's new hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening, launched in 1911 as a substitute for both lard and butter. Its "Calendar of Dinners" ran dated menus through the year with Crisco worked into dish after dish, grilled tomatoes included, and the entry here has been clipped mid-calendar between one day's coffee and the next day's Hollandaise soup. Grilled or broiled tomatoes belonged to the English-influenced breakfast and grill plate of the period, cooked in the drip pan under a chop or a rasher so nothing was wasted; the advertising interest presumably lay in showing that a vegetable-fat film would brown and baste as well as the butter or bacon fat a cook would otherwise have reached for.