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Tomato Souffle
Take 1 large cupful of thick, strained tomato pulp; season with salt and pepper, and stir in the beaten yolks of 6 eggs, and 1 tablespoonful of melted butter. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth and fold them in; turn into a buttered pan and bake fifteen minutes in a hot oven. Serve at once.
A very lean soufflé — no flour, no milk, no cheese — so the tomato pulp itself has to carry the structure. Everything depends on getting that pulp thick enough before the eggs go near it.
- The hinge: reduce the pulp"Thick, strained tomato pulp" means tomatoes cooked down and pushed through a sieve until they mound on a spoon, not tomato purée poured from a can. Watery pulp will weep in the oven and the soufflé will collapse into scrambled egg. Reduce a 28-oz can of whole tomatoes, sieved, to about one cup and let it cool to lukewarm before adding yolks.
- A hot ovenRead this as roughly 400-450F. Fifteen minutes at that heat gives a puffed, still-soft centre; in a deeper dish it will need 20 to 25 minutes, and the top should be set and browned before you open the door.
- The panThe recipe does not say what shape of dish; a shallow one suits so short a bake. Butter it well and, if you want more rise, sit it on a preheated baking sheet so the base sets fast.
- TemperingBeat the yolks first, then add the warm pulp to them a spoonful at a time rather than the reverse. Six yolks dropped into hot pulp will curdle before they emulsify.
- FoldingStir a third of the beaten whites into the tomato base to slacken it, then fold in the rest with a light hand. The base is heavy and acidic and will knock the air out of the whites quickly if you overwork it.
- SeasoningTomato needs more salt than most soufflé bases, and the acidity flattens in the oven. Season the pulp assertively at the reduction stage, when you can still taste it.
- Yield and timingServes four as a side or two as a light main. "Serve at once" is not decoration — a flourless soufflé begins to sink within two or three minutes of leaving the oven.
Vegetable souffles were common in American cookbooks around 1900, and by the 1890s canned tomatoes were cheap and widely available, which made a dish like this possible outside of high summer; tomatoes had moved over the nineteenth century from a food regarded with suspicion in some quarters to an everyday one. Note what is absent -- the bechamel base used in many classic souffle recipes. The result is closer to a baked tomato custard than to a classic souffle.