Eggs and Tomatoes


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 the eggs were to be cooked as if they were scrambled since no one wants raw eggs coating tomatoes.



Stir until the eggs are firmly done (my husband does not like soft eggs, so any egg dish we share must be firmly set)  They're only getting there in this picture.




Once the eggs were cooked, I drained the frying pan.  The tomatoes continued to release liquid while cooking and the resulting dish had a lot of extraneous liquid.




 

Reseason to taste and enjoy



My Evaluation


The dish tasted nice - tomatoes and eggs go well together.  The eggs tuned out rather "curdy" - they separated into small particles, reminding me most of cottage cheese.  They tasted fine, but it's not a texture I enjoy for eggs, being a fan of fluffy eggs.

I would seriously consider draining the tomatoes before cooking them, even though removing the seeds and seed pulp already reduced some of the fluid. 

If I were to cook this again, taking my personal tastes into account, I would consider sauteeing the tomatoes in a different pan, draining them well, and then adding them into the eggs as the eggs began to set.  Or, I would consider not stirring the egg and tomato mixture, letting it cook something like a frittata.  



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