— gratinées.—There are two or three ways
of doing this; for instance, peel and slice the tomatoes,
and arrange them in a well-buttered dish, previously
strewn with crumbs, grated cheese, pepper and salt,
either in layers by themselves, or alternately with
parboiled and sliced onion, cover these with grated
cheese, breadcrumbs, pepper, salt, and minced chives
or parsley, and repeat these layers till the dish is
full, finishing with the crumbs, etc.; put some morsels
of butter over it all, and bake for twenty minutes or
so. Or, again, choose large tomatoes, cut a thick
slice off the top (or if very large, halve them), scoop
out as much of the flesh as you can without endanger-
ing the skins, and put the latter aside. Now fry
a small tablespoonful of minced chives in ½oz. of
butter, till nicely coloured, then add the scooped out
pulp of half a dozen tomatoes, and stir it altogether
over the fire till the tomatoes are cooked; then sieve
it, add sufficient freshly-grated and seasoned white
breadcrumbs to thicken it, mix to it the well-beaten
yolks of two eggs for every three tomato cases, and fill
the tomato cases with this mixture, dust them lightly
with grated cheese, put a tiny pat of butter on each,
and bake on a buttered baking-tin for ten minutes,
and use.