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Red Tomato Soup
Skim the grease from a quart of beef stock and turn into it a can of tomatoes, or a quart of fresh tomatoes which have been peeled and sliced. Simmer for an hour. Then rub the soup through a sieve and return to the fire with a large teaspoonful of sugar, a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour, a teaspoonful of onion juice, a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, and pepper and salt to taste. Add half a cupful of boiled rice. Simmer five minutes, and serve with squares of toasted bread.
A straightforward puree-style tomato soup built on beef stock, thickened with a butter-and-flour paste rather than cream. A few of its ingredients and measures need translating.
- Kitchen bouquetA commercial browning-and-seasoning liquid, still sold under that name; it is caramel colour with vegetable seasoning. A teaspoon darkens and deepens the soup. Omit it if you like — the soup will simply be lighter in colour and a little less savoury.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion on a fine grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or grate it and use the liquid that collects. A teaspoon is roughly what half a small onion yields.
- Butter rolled in flourButter worked or coated with flour to a paste, the same idea as beurre manie: take the tablespoonful of soft butter called for and work in flour until it holds together, then whisk it into the simmering soup in small pieces. It thickens as it disperses, which is why it goes in at the end rather than at the start.
- A can of tomatoesThe larger period tin of tomatoes held roughly a quart, which is why the recipe offers a quart of fresh tomatoes as the alternative. A modern 28 oz can, with its juice, is a reasonable substitution.
- The hour of simmeringFresh tomatoes need the full hour to break down enough to sieve; canned tomatoes are already soft and 20 to 30 minutes is plenty. Longer simply reduces the soup, which is not harmful but will need thinning.
- SievingRubbing through a sieve removes seeds and skin and gives the smooth body the recipe intends. A food mill does the same job faster; a blender is less suitable, since it breaks up the seeds, which are often blamed for bitterness.
- Rice at the endThe half cup of boiled rice goes in already cooked and only warms through in the final five minutes. Add it just before serving or it will keep swelling and absorb the broth.
- Skimming the stockChilling the stock first makes this trivial — the fat sets in a cap you can lift off. Any fat left behind will float in beads on a soup that is otherwise not enriched.
- YieldAbout a quart and a half of finished soup, or four generous first-course servings.
Tomato soup thickened with a butter-and-flour paste and served with toast or rice belongs to a distinct American moment: canned tomatoes had become cheap and reliable in the last decades of the nineteenth century, and household books began printing tomato recipes for the whole year rather than for late summer only. The tomato here is a flavouring for beef stock rather than the whole substance of the dish, and the puree is achieved with a sieve, the standard tool before domestic blenders. Kitchen Bouquet, a bottled browning sauce available in American kitchens by the later nineteenth century and still made, marks the recipe as one written for a cook who shopped rather than one who reduced her own glaze.