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Tomato Jelly Sandwich
One cupful of boiled and strained tomatoes, seasoned with salt, pepper, paprika and a little tabasco sauce. Dissolve quarter box of gelatine in one-half cup of water, add to the tomatoes, and mix thoroughly. Cool in forms that will slice in shape of sandwiches to be used. Place between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread.
A tea-sandwich filling of firm tomato aspic, sliced to fit the bread. It works, but the gelatine measurement is the part that needs translating.
- Quarter box of gelatineGranulated gelatine of this period was generally sold in boxes reckoned at about an ounce, divided into four portions of roughly a quarter ounce each. A quarter box is usually taken as one modern envelope (7 g, a scant 2¼ teaspoons), which will set the 1½ cups of total liquid here into a slice that holds its shape.
- Bloom before dissolvingThe instruction to "dissolve" in half a cup of water skips a step modern packets assume: sprinkle the gelatine over the cold water, let it stand five minutes until it swells, then warm it gently until clear. Undissolved granules give a grainy, weeping jelly.
- Add the gelatine warm, the tomato coolThe dissolved gelatine must be liquid when it meets the tomato, and the tomato should not be hot enough to matter either way. Stir the warm gelatine into the seasoned tomato in a thin stream, whisking, or it will set in threads.
- Boiled and strained tomatoesThis is what would now be sold as passata or a smooth tomato purée, not paste. If using canned tomatoes, simmer and pass them through a sieve; a cup of thin, seedless purée is what the recipe expects.
- The moulds"Forms that will slice in shape of sandwiches" means a straight-sided rectangular container roughly the footprint of your loaf. A small loaf tin lined with plastic wrap works; chill at least four hours, then turn out and cut slices about a quarter inch thick.
- Season above your instinctCold food and gelatine both mute flavour. Season the tomato mixture until it tastes slightly too sharp and salty at room temperature, and it will be right once set and chilled.
- Buttering is structuralThe thin layer of butter on the bread is a moisture barrier, not a flavour. Butter it to the edges, softened rather than melted, or the jelly will soak the crumb within the hour.
- Yield and timingAbout 1½ cups of jelly, enough for eight to ten small tea sandwiches. Assemble no more than an hour before serving, and keep them covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator.
- Filed under "Sweet"The reason for the placement is unclear. Nothing in the recipe is sweet; serve it as a savoury.
Moulded tomato jelly belongs to the first great age of powdered gelatine. Once granulated gelatine came to be sold commercially, generally traced to the 1890s, the long business of boiling calves' feet and clarifying stock with eggshell receded from the domestic kitchen, and aspic moved from professional garde-manger work to the range of any competent home cook. Tomato aspic in particular became a fixture of American luncheon and tea tables in the early twentieth century, valued because it was brightly coloured, could be made the day before, and held its shape on a warm afternoon. Slicing it to fit bread, as here, is a sandwich-book conceit: the whole genre of the ladies' tea sandwich rested on fillings that were neat, cool, thin and would not stain a glove. The tabasco is a period signature too, a bottled heat that spread widely through American cookbooks after the 1870s and turns up in aspics and salad dressings as often as in anything hotter.