Tomatoes Baked
Select perfect tomatoes of medium size, wash, wipe dry and place in a shallow earthen baking dish with the stem side down; have baking dish well buttered. Bake in a hot oven an hour, or until the skins are brown and the tomatoes cooked all through. Serve with salt, white pepper, butter and a sprinkle of sugar, if liked.
A whole-roasted tomato with nothing done to it beforehand — the method depends entirely on choosing fruit that can stand up to an hour of dry heat.
- "Hot oven"In period terms usually something in the range of about 400-450F. At the upper end medium tomatoes may collapse before the hour is out; around 400F for 40-50 minutes should give browned skins and cooked centres without a puddle.
- Stem side downThe recipe gives no reason, but the stem end is the one break in the skin, and turning it down presumably helps keep the juices in the fruit. Note that nothing is cored or cut: the tomatoes go in whole.
- Choice of tomato"Perfect" means unblemished and firm-ripe, not soft. Thin-skinned modern slicers split; small paste tomatoes or firm round tomatoes about 2-3 inches across hold their shape best.
- Earthen baking dishA shallow glazed ceramic or stoneware dish. It holds steady heat and will not react with the acid. Metal works but browns the undersides faster, so check earlier.
- Buttered, not oiledButter at 425F will darken and can catch under an hour's roasting. Use a generous film and add a spoonful of water to the dish if the bottom starts to scorch.
- Sugar and white pepperWhite pepper was often preferred for pale and delicately coloured dishes in this period, where black specks would show. The sugar is optional in the original ("if liked") and is presumably there to offset acidity; with good summer tomatoes it can be left out.
- YieldFigure one to two tomatoes per person as a side.
Baking tomatoes whole in their skins is one of the plainer treatments found in American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s. Tomatoes had only become fully respectable on the American table in the second half of the nineteenth century, and earlier recipes commonly cooked them down for an hour or more, so a recipe that leaves them whole and barely seasoned suggests a greater confidence in the fruit itself. The instruction to serve with butter, salt, white pepper and optional sugar at table rather than seasoning in the kitchen is in keeping with the period's service of simple vegetables.