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Puree of Tomatoes
Cut three ounces of nice raw ham into small pieces, put into a stewpan with three shallots, a bay leaf, a piece of thyme, small blade of mace, and a few pepper corns; to this put a piece of butter size of a walnut, fry all together until a light brown; then squeeze one dozen ripe tomatoes and add a small teacup of white sauce; reduce the purée on the fire, rub through a very fine sieve, and put into the stewpan, and when about ready to send to the table add to it a small piece of fresh butter, and a little glaze PURÉE OF ONIONS.
Peel, then slice seven large onions, put on to parboil in water for a very few minutes, drain them through a colander or sieve, then plunge into cold water, press in a cloth in order to extract all the water; then put into a stewpan with salt, mignonette pepper, little nutmeg and one spoonful of white broth; then place on a slow fire to simmer slowly about thirty-five minutes (keep the stewpan covered), pour the onions into a pan and moisten with a small teacup of white sauce, and the same of cream. Reduce the purée huriedly over a quick fire, rub through a hair sieve on to a dish, then put into a pan. Just before using add one small teaspoonful of sugar.
Two recipes have been run together here without a break: the tomato purée ends at "a little glaze," and the onion purée begins with "Peel, then slice seven large onions." Both are French-style vegetable purées meant as accompaniments or sauce bases, not soups.
- The hinge: reduce, then sieve, then finishIn both recipes the purée is reduced on the heat before it goes through the sieve, and the butter or the sugar goes in only at the last moment: "when about ready to send to the table" for the tomato, "just before using" for the onion.
- Raw ham"Raw ham" means cured but uncooked ham rather than fresh pork. Three ounces cut small is what the recipe asks for; it is there for salt and savour, and the pieces are left behind with the aromatics when the purée is rubbed through the sieve.
- Butter the size of a walnutAbout 1 ounce, or 2 tablespoons. A "small teacup" of this period is conventionally reckoned at around 5 fluid ounces; adjust by eye, since the tomatoes vary far more than the cup does.
- Squeeze one dozen tomatoesThis means crush them by hand into the pan, seeds, juice and all, since the sieve will catch skin and seed later. A dozen ripe tomatoes is about 3 pounds and will cook down a long way.
- White sauce and glazeThe white sauce is a plain flour-and-butter sauce made with milk or white stock. The "glaze" is meat glaze, stock reduced to a syrup; a spoonful of reduced brown stock or a small amount of demi-glace does the same job. Both purées will need more salt than the recipes mention.
- Mignonette pepper and maceMignonette is coarsely cracked pepper, usually white, though the name was also used for a coarse mixture of white and black. A blade of mace is a single piece of the dried aril around a nutmeg seed, about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace if you cannot get whole blades, added with the aromatics and strained out.
- SievesA hair sieve was a fine-meshed sieve that would not react with acid. A fine nylon or stainless drum sieve, or a food mill on its finest plate, gives the same result; a blender does not, because it purées the tomato skins and seeds rather than removing them.
- Parboiling the onionsThe brief boil and cold plunge strip the raw sulphurous edge; pressing the onions dry in a cloth matters, or the purée will be watery and the thirty-five minute simmer will steam rather than sweat. Keep the pan covered and the heat genuinely low so the onions stay pale.
- YieldNeither recipe gives a yield. On these quantities each purée reduces to something in the region of 2 cups, enough for a small dish of vegetable or a sauce for a few people.
These are purées in the strict nineteenth-century French sense: a vegetable cooked down, sieved smooth, bound with a little white sauce, and served as a garnish for meat or as the foundation of a soup. The mace, the meat glaze, the mignonette pepper and the hair sieve all belong to the professional French vocabulary that reached English kitchens through the cookery writing of the period. The tomato purée assumes ripe fresh tomatoes squeezed by hand rather than any concentrate. The teaspoon of sugar at the end of the onion purée balances onions that have not been browned.