Hoopskirts

Stewed tomatoes for breakfast - a very British thing.  Also a very breakfast thing in nineteenth-century America.  Eggs and Tomatoes comes from Mrs. Bliss's 1850 volume, The Practical Cookbook  (Philadelphia).  It's not a seasonal thing for me right now, since, being April, it's not tomato season. The Recipe To facilitate peeling the tomatoes, I put them into boiling water to blanch them.  Once the skins split, I removed them with a slotted spoon, removed the skins, halved them, removed the seeds, and then rough chopped the remainder Blanched tomatoes I melted two tablespoons of butter in a frying pan, added the chopped tomatoes, and let them cook.  I added salt and pepper to taste. Since the tomatoes were already warmed from the blanching, this didn't take very long.  I beat six eggs with a fork as if I was making scrambled eggs. Pour the eggs into the stewed tomatoes and begin stirring.   I presumed th

A good breakfast egg is a delightful thing!  And, evidently a controversial one as well.  Inspired by the dust-up over Alice Water's wrought iron egg spoon (for a mere $250), I decided to take a look at some period egg recipes. Today we look at the coddled egg.  I love eggs prepared in all ways, but coddling is not in my normal repertoire, somehow seeming fussier to prepare, although it really isn't.  To coddle is to pamper, to protect to the point of overprotecting.  A coddled egg is cooked out of the shell, gently and slowly, in water rather than over direct heat in a frying pan.   I've made coddled eggs in my modern life but was curious how a period recipe might vary. A Period Version The Praire Farmer, July 1852, p 331 I found this recipe copied verbatim in many cookbooks. The difference that stood out when I compared it to modern techniques, was that pouring boiling water on the eggs was the preferred method.  Every modern recipe I have read has the cook br