Home › Salads › Jellied Salad in Tomato Cases (Pare and grate cucumbers)
Jellied Salad in Tomato Cases (Pare and grate cucumbers)
Pare and grate cucumbers and drain off about half of the clear liquid; to the remaining liquid and pulp take for each cupful one-half of a tablespoonful of granulated gelatine and soak it in a few tablespoonfuls of water; when soft, set over hot water until melted; add this to the prepared cucumber, together with salt and pepper to taste, and one tablespoonful of lemon juice; allow one good-sized tomato for each person, cut off the stem and scoop out the pulp and turn upside down to drain; fill with the cucumber mixture, to which some finely chopped sweetbreads (or other meat) may be added if desired, and stand on ice until the mixture jellies. Serve in lettuce nests, with a spoonful of mayonnaise dressing on the top of each tomato.
A cucumber jelly set inside a hollowed tomato — a light luncheon salad from the years when granulated gelatine had just made moulded dishes practical at home. Two things decide whether it works: how dry you get the cucumber, and how firm the set is.
- Drain harder than it saysGrated cucumber is mostly water, and the recipe only asks you to pour off half the liquid. Press the pulp in a sieve or squeeze it in a clean towel until it stops dripping, then measure pulp and juice together for the gelatine calculation. Excess water is the difference between a sliceable jelly and a tomato full of cucumber soup.
- Gelatine strengthHalf a tablespoonful (1½ teaspoons) per cup is rather more gelatine per cup than a modern envelope calls for (2¼ teaspoons sets 2 cups), so expect a firm, sliceable set. Use 1½ teaspoons per cup for a delicate jelly, a scant 2 teaspoons if you want it to hold its shape once the tomato is cut.
- Melting the gelatineSoften in a few tablespoons of cold water for five minutes, then set the cup in hot water until clear. Do not boil it, and stir it into the cucumber while the mixture is at room temperature — cold pulp will seize the gelatine into threads.
- Sweetbreads must already be cookedPeriod cookbooks generally direct that sweetbreads be soaked, blanched, poached and pressed before they reach a salad. Nothing in this dish is heated, so any meat you add has to be fully cooked and chilled first. The same goes for "other meat" — cold cooked chicken or ham.
- Preparing the tomato casesChoose firm, squat tomatoes that sit flat. Cut off the stem end, scoop out seeds and pulp, salt the inside lightly and invert on a rack for 20 minutes; salt draws out the water that would otherwise loosen the jelly. Peeling is optional but makes for easier eating.
- "Stand on ice"Read this as the refrigerator, 3 to 4 hours, or overnight — check at three hours by tilting one tomato.
- Lemon and seasoningSeason the cucumber mixture more assertively than tastes right at room temperature. Chilling mutes salt and acid noticeably, and the tablespoonful of lemon juice (the recipe is not explicit whether this is per cupful or for the whole batch) is doing structural work as well as flavouring.
- YieldOne tomato per person, as stated. A pound of cucumbers, well drained, yields roughly a cup and a half of pulp and juice — enough to fill four to six medium tomatoes.
Moulded salads like this one belong to the period when packaged granulated gelatine became a pantry staple rather than a project. Earlier jellies could mean hours of simmering calves' feet or isinglass and straining the result through a flannel bag, though prepared sheet and shred gelatines had been sold since the mid-nineteenth century; by the 1890s granulated gelatine in pre-measured packets was widely available. Cookbooks of the period responded with savoury jellies, aspics and "cases" — hollowed tomatoes, cucumber cups, pepper shells — presented on lettuce with a spoonful of mayonnaise, a formula that remained standard in American luncheon cookery for decades. The chopped sweetbreads are the period detail: sweetbreads (the thymus or pancreas of a calf) were a genteel, expensive ingredient that turned a vegetable salad into a course substantial enough to serve at a ladies' luncheon.