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Tomato Cream Soup--No. 2
Stew a quart of tomatoes until soft and then rub them through a colander. Add a pinch of soda and a teaspoonful of onion juice and return to the fire. Put 1 tablespoonful of butter and 1 of flour in another saucepan; cook until they bubble; then pour a pint of milk upon them. When the milk thickens, add the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper, and just before serving add a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce.
A standard turn-of-the-century cream of tomato: a thin white sauce with strained tomato pulp stirred in at the last moment. The order of operations is what keeps it from curdling.
- Combine hot with hotAdd the tomato to the thickened milk, not the milk to the tomato, and do it off a hard boil. Acid meeting hot milk without the buffer of flour is what makes this soup break into curds.
- The pinch of sodaA pinch of baking soda, perhaps an eighth of a teaspoon per quart, cuts enough of the tomato acid to make the milk less likely to break. It will foam up as it goes in. More than a pinch is generally said to flatten the flavour and leave a soapy edge, so err small.
- A quart of tomatoesProbably fresh tomatoes stewed down, though canned would serve; figure roughly 2 lb fresh, or a large can (a 28-oz can is a little under a quart) with its juice. Straining through a colander removes skin and most seeds; a food mill does it faster.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion and press the pulp in a sieve, or grate on a microplane and use juice and pulp together. A teaspoonful is a modest amount, enough for background rather than onion flavour.
- RouxOne tablespoon each of butter and flour to a pint of milk gives a deliberately thin sauce. Cook it until it bubbles and smells faintly of biscuit, about two minutes, so the flour loses its raw taste.
- Worcestershire at the endThe recipe holds it back until serving, so it is stirred in at the last moment rather than simmered in the soup.
- YieldAbout six cups, serving four as a first course.