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Cream of Tomato Soup
2 tablespoonfuls flour 1 1/2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 cupful milk 2 1/2 cupfuls strained tomato juice 1 teaspoonful celery salt Salt, pepper, and paprika to taste Pinch baking soda 1 tablespoonful tomato catsup Blend Crisco and flour together in saucepan over fire, add milk and bring to boiling point. Heat tomato juice, tomato catsup and add soda and seasonings. Just before serving add Crisco mixture to tomato juice and stir till boiling. Serve hot. Another method, is to cook 1 quart can of tomatoes with 1 quart of water twenty minutes, then rub through sieve. Blend 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco with 2 tablespoonfuls flour, add 1 tablespoonful sugar, salt, pepper, and red pepper to taste, and 1 tablespoonful tomato catsup. Add pinch of baking soda to tomatoes, then add gradually to Crisco mixture. Just bring to boiling point and serve with tablespoonful whipped cream on top of each plate.
A white-sauce tomato soup of the sort that dominated American cookbooks in the 1910s, built to keep the milk from curdling in the acid. The whole recipe hinges on that.
- The hinge: combine at the last secondMilk proteins curdle on contact with tomato acid, especially if held hot. Bring both mixtures to temperature separately and combine only immediately before serving, as written, then take the pot off the heat as soon as it boils.
- The pinch of sodaBaking soda neutralises some of the tomato's acid, which is the period's insurance against curdling. Use no more than about 1/8 teaspoon for this quantity; too much gives a soapy, flat taste and a dull colour, and it will foam when it hits the tomato.
- CriscoCrisco is still sold, but any neutral fat works: 1 1/2 tablespoons butter makes a better soup than shortening here. This book was published by the makers of Crisco, which is why it appears in nearly every recipe.
- Strained tomato juiceNot the salted, seasoned drink sold as tomato juice today. Use passata, or a 28 oz can of whole tomatoes blitzed and pushed through a sieve, which yields roughly the 2 1/2 cupfuls called for.
- Celery saltA full teaspoon plus additional salt to taste will be aggressive by modern standards. Add half, then correct at the end once the soup is assembled.
- Second method proportionsA quart can of tomatoes stretched with a quart of water is a thin base; the flour-and-fat binding does the work. Expect a light soup rather than the thick puree the name now suggests.
- Oven and stovetop heatStovetop heat -- "over fire" means moderate heat. Cook the flour and fat together a minute or two before the milk goes in, or the soup tastes pasty.
- YieldAbout 3 1/2 cups, or four small first-course servings. The second method makes roughly double.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, introduced in 1911 as the first widely marketed all-vegetable shortening; the fat appears in nearly every recipe in the book because selling it was the point. The soup itself is a straightforward product of the era's reliance on the flour-thickened white sauce, which turned up in croquettes, creamed vegetables and creamed soups alike. Canned tomatoes had been a cheap American pantry staple since the 1870s, and cream of tomato soup became one of the most reliably domestic of soups; the commercial soup, launched in 1897, had already made the flavour familiar to households that would never have simmered and sieved their own. The baking soda trick is the tell of a period cook working without commercial stabilisers, and it is still the reason milk-and-tomato soups made this way survive the trip to the table.