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Tomato Sauce
Stew ten tomatoes with three cloves, and pepper and salt, for fifteen minutes (some add a sliced onion and sprig of parsley), strain through a sieve, put on the stove in a saucepan in which a lump of butter the size of an egg and level table-spoon flour have been well mixed and cooked; stir all until smooth and serve. Canned tomatoes may be used as a substitute.
A straightforward tomato velouté-style sauce: cook down, strain, then bind with a butter-flour roux. The only real technique point is cooking the roux before the purée goes in.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Paired with one level tablespoon of flour that is a very butter-heavy roux, and the sauce will be rich and only lightly thickened; increase the flour to 2 tablespoons for a sauce that coats a spoon.
- Ten tomatoesAssume medium field tomatoes, so roughly 2 1/2 to 3 lb. The recipe allows canned tomatoes as a substitute without naming a quantity; a large can (around 28 oz) is the nearest modern equivalent, though it is somewhat less fruit than ten fresh tomatoes.
- Cook the flour first"Well mixed and cooked" is the hinge. Let the butter and flour bubble together two or three minutes over medium heat before the tomato goes in, or the sauce tastes of raw paste. Do not let it brown if you want a red sauce.
- ClovesAlmost certainly three whole cloves rather than ground, since the sauce is strained and whole spice would be caught with the skins and seeds; used this way they perfume rather than flavor aggressively. Ground cloves in the same quantity would overwhelm the dish.
- Fifteen minutes is enoughThe stewing is only to break the fruit down for straining, not to reduce it. Longer cooking before straining gives a duller, more cooked flavor with no gain in body, since the thickening comes from the roux.
- StrainingA fine sieve and the back of a ladle will do it; press hard and scrape rather than pushing skins through. A food mill on the medium disc is faster and gives the same result.
- Adding the puréePour it into the roux in stages, whisking smooth each time, and let it simmer a minute or two at the end so the starch fully swells.
- YieldPerhaps 2 to 3 cups of finished sauce, enough for four to six servings. The recipe itself suggests no accompaniment.
Buckeye Cookery groups this with the catsups and sauces because in an 1870s household a tomato sauce belonged to the same tomato glut that produced the catsups — the difference being that this one is made fresh and served hot. The recipe is essentially a French sauce technique applied to an American surplus: a butter-and-flour liaison of the kind Anglo-American cookbooks had long been printing, with tomato standing in for stock. The casual note that "canned tomatoes may be used as a substitute" is worth pausing on; commercial canning of tomatoes expanded rapidly in the United States after the Civil War, and by the time this book appeared a tinned tomato was an unremarkable pantry item rather than a novelty. The parenthetical "some add a sliced onion and sprig of parsley" seems characteristic of the book's method — recording the range of local practice rather than settling on one version.