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Tomato Bouillon (To five cups of Standard Broth)
To five cups of Standard Broth add one cup of thick tomato purée. Reheat and serve in bouillon cups.
A two-line variation that assumes you already have the book's Standard Broth on hand. Everything depends on the quality of those two components, since nothing else is added.
- Standard BrothA base preparation given elsewhere in the book, so you need it made before you start. A good unsalted beef stock stands in; commercial bouillon cubes will read as salty and flat once the tomato goes in.
- What "thick tomato purée" meansNot modern canned tomato paste, which is far more concentrated. Period purée is fresh or canned tomatoes cooked down and pushed through a sieve, roughly the consistency of heavy cream. If using paste, thin roughly 3 to 5 tablespoons with water to make a cup, judging by consistency rather than measure.
- Strain againSieved purée still carries seed fragments and skin. Pass the finished bouillon through a fine strainer or a doubled square of cheesecloth so it is clear enough to drink from a cup.
- Reheat, do not boilBring it just to steaming. A hard boil clouds the broth and pushes the tomato toward a stewed, tinny flavor.
- SeasoningThe original gives none. Taste after combining: a pinch of sugar and a few grinds of pepper usually set it right.
- Bouillon cupsTwo-handled cups of about 5 to 6 fluid ounces, drunk rather than spooned. Six cups of finished soup serves eight to ten as a first course at that size.
- ServingServe hot; crackers, cheese straws or thin toast suit it. It holds a couple of days refrigerated and reheats without harm.
52 Sunday Dinners belongs to a wave of early twentieth-century American cookbooks organized as complete menus rather than lists of dishes, with a small set of "standard" preparations, broth among them, that the housekeeper made once and spun into many. Tomato bouillon reflects the moment when canned tomatoes had become reliable and cheap enough that a purée was a pantry staple rather than a summer luxury, and when clear soups served in handled cups were the fashionable way to begin a formal meal, lighter than a cream soup and easier for a hostess to manage without a servant at the table. The word bouillon is simply the French for a boiled broth, from bouillir, to boil, though as this recipe quietly shows, the finished soup was best kept just short of one.