Scalloped Tomatoes

James B White

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Similar recipes appeared in other cook books, including one titled "Baked Tomatoes" in the 1839 Kentucky Housewife, but the recipe here is from the 1836 edition of Mrs. Mary Randolph's Virginia Housewife

To Scallop Tomatos
Peel off the skin from large, full, ripe tomatoes--put a layer in the bottom of a deep dish, cover it well with bread grated fine; sprinkle on pepper and salt, and lay some bits of butter over them--put another layer of each, till the dish is full--let the top be covered with crumbs and butter--bake it a nice brown.


So the first step is to peel the tomatoes, and that can't be skipped. Tomato skin was regularly removed in any antebellum recipe for cooked tomatoes. It was done by dipping the tomato for a few seconds in boiling water, and the skin slipped off easily.

You'll need to guess how many tomatoes will fill the dish you're using. Mrs. Randolph implied using them whole, though other recipes called for slicing or even dicing.

Bread went stale quickly, so every household had hard bread to use up. In this case, you would use a grater to make what you needed, though modern cooks may wish to purchase bread crumbs.

The rest is self explanatory, and when using a modern oven, I've baked it at 350 degrees. My notes say 25 minutes or less, but it really is just a matter of waiting for the top to brown, then taking it out. Mrs. T. J. Crowen suggested a half hour in a quick oven, and also said to press the seeds and juice out of the tomatoes, something to keep in mind if they seem to be overly moist.

Ballou's Magazine, and Godey's as well in 1860 suggested baking at least three hours, which would require a cooler oven, but they said the tomatoes will have an unpleasant raw taste otherwise. They also suggested the addition of cayenne pepper, nutmeg or mace sprinkled to season each layer of tomatoes. The Prairie Farmer's 1853 version added egg on top, presumably on top of a final layer of breadcrumbs to create a nice browned top.

So where does the term "scalloped" come from, as nothing is scalloped like a decorative pie crust? The modern Cook's Info suggests it applied to breaded food, and came from serving breaded oysters in scallop shells.

Because there are persistent myths, it's worth noting that people didn't think the tomato was poisonous in antebellum America. At most, early cookery books suggested the flavor might take some getting used to. Tomatoes were the subject of a health fad in the 1830s, with tomato pills and such, but that had blown over by the 1860s and it was just another vegetable.

The most common antebellum variety was the Large Red, with the Smooth Large Red being a welcome addition. The Large Red was 2"-4" across, slightly flattened, with vertical indentations or ribs that could make peeling a chore if they were especially exaggerated. The Smooth Large Red addressed the problem. Fearing Burr, the garden guru of the 1860s, describes the Large Red here and talks about some of the newer varieties becoming available. Large Red seeds are available, but the tomatoes are similar enough to regular modern garden-grown tomatoes that they would be hard to tell apart.

I suppose butter is worth mentioning. I have only made scalloped tomatoes with modern butter, made from sweet cream, but period butter was often made from sour cream. If churning was done less than once a day and/or the milk was poorly handled, it might be starting to sour, and that imparted a unique nutty flavor to the butter. Most people liked the flavor, if the butter hadn't actually turned rancid. I do not know how much if any it would impact the flavor of this recipe, but it makes a difference in recipes depending more on the flavor of butter.
 
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This is delightful, James B! Love the discussion of the tomato, variety and all. So often we don't think about our ingredients enough. And, I didn't know they made butter of sour cream - that would indeed be unusual. :thumbsup:
 
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