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Consomme with Tomato Blocks
Use tomato conserve, or the thickest part of canned tomatoes, put through a sieve, and cook slowly to a thick paste. To a half-cup of this add a tiny bit of ground mace, 1/4 saltspoonful salt and Tabasco, and the slightly beaten white of 2 eggs; pour into shallow dish, stand in a pan of water, and cook in oven till well set; cut into fancy blocks.
Turn hot consomme into tureen and carefully drop in the blocks. This may be varied by substituting peas for the tomatoes, seasoning with celery seed and pepper instead of Tabasco.
A savoury custard garnish for clear soup, cut into shapes and floated in the tureen at the last moment. The whole trick is a gentle, even set.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so a quarter saltspoonful is a large pinch. The Tabasco is meant in the same order of magnitude: two or three drops.
- Tomato conserveNot jam. It means tomato cooked down to a stiff paste, which is what modern tomato paste already is. Half a cup of tube or canned paste, or thick passata reduced until it mounds on a spoon, works directly.
- Oven and water bathThe recipe gives neither temperature nor time, only 'cook in oven till well set.' A moderate oven, in the region of 300-325F, with the dish standing in hot water, suits a custard of this kind; anything hotter risks curdling the whites so the blocks weep in the soup. Judge it by feel -- firm to a light touch -- rather than by the clock, though a shallow dish may take something like 20-25 minutes.
- Depth of the custardPour it about half an inch deep. Thinner sheets tear when you cut them, thicker ones dominate a clear soup and take much longer to set through.
- CuttingChill the sheet before cutting, then use small aspic cutters or a knife for diamonds and squares. Cold custard cuts cleanly; warm custard drags.
- Adding to the soupHave the consomme hot but not boiling, and lower the blocks in at the table. Boiling breaks them up and clouds the consomme, which defeats the point of a clear soup.
- Pea variationSieved cooked peas are wetter than tomato paste, so cook them down to the same stiffness before adding the whites, or the custard will not set.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Half a cup of paste with two whites makes only a thin sheet in a shallow dish, so expect a garnish for a few servings at most once trimmings are allowed for; scale up if you are serving a large tureen.