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Tomato Consomme with Pearls
Soak 1/2 cup pearl tapioca over night in 1 quart cold water. Cook in same water until tender and clear. Drain liquor from 1quart can tomatoes, add 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon paprika 1 pint chicken stock or 2 chicken bouillon cubes dissolved in 1 point water. Wash 2 eggs, slightly beat the whites and add whites and shells to the soup. Stir until soup boils, boil 2 minutes, remove from heat and let stand 20 minutes . Strain through double cheesecloth, add tapioca drained from water and rinsed. Reheat and serve in bouillon cups. A bit of Red coloring may be added to intensify the color.
A clarified tomato broth with tapioca pearls suspended in it — an early-twentieth-century luncheon soup that depends entirely on the clearing step. Two typographical slips in the original are worth noting before you start.
- "1 point water" is 1 pintThe bouillon cubes are dissolved in a pint (2 cups) of water, matching the pint of chicken stock offered as the alternative. "Point" is a compositor's error for "pint."
- The hinge: never stir after it boilsThe egg whites and crushed shells form a raft that traps cloudiness. Stir constantly only until the boil begins, then stop entirely — disturbing the raft during the two-minute boil or the twenty-minute rest breaks it up and the consommé stays murky. Ladle the broth out through the raft rather than pouring the pot.
- Pearl tapioca is not the instant kindUse large or small pearl tapioca, still sold in Asian groceries and as "boba" pearls. Minute or granulated tapioca will dissolve into paste. The overnight soak is not optional for large pearls; expect 15–30 minutes of simmering afterward until they are translucent with no white center.
- Cook the pearls separatelyThey go into the finished consommé only at the end, drained and rinsed. Any starch carried over will cloud the broth you just clarified.
- Tomato liquor onlyYou want the drained juice, not the pulp. The original calls for a quart can (32 oz); the nearest common modern size is 28 oz, which will yield roughly 1½ to 2 cups of liquid depending on the brand. Save the tomatoes for something else. If your can yields little liquid, top up with bottled tomato juice rather than adding solids.
- Wash the eggsThe instruction is there because the shells go into the pot. Rinse them under warm running water before cracking; the shells add calcium carbonate and surface area that help the raft form.
- PaprikaIn American cookbooks of this period paprika generally meant a mild, sweet type (Hungarian or Spanish), used as much for colour as heat. A teaspoon in a quart of soup is a seasoning, not a burn.
- Yield and serviceAbout 5 cups, or six bouillon cups. Serve very hot; the pearls settle, so stir the pot between cups. The red coloring is cosmetic and can be skipped.
Consommé — broth clarified with egg white until it is bright enough to read through — was the marker of a properly run kitchen in the era of the elaborate luncheon menu. The tapioca "pearls" are the period's favorite trick for giving a clear soup visual interest: cassava starch, imported in shot-sized beads, that turns glassy when cooked and hangs suspended in the broth. The same idea appears in older French kitchens as consommé aux perles du Japon, the name tapioca pearls generally went by in nineteenth-century Europe, where they were sometimes confused with sago. The bouillon cube offered as an alternative to homemade stock suggests a rough period for the recipe: commercial cubes had become an ordinary American pantry item by the 1910s and 1920s, and their appearance beside real chicken stock is the small concession to convenience that runs through this whole genre of entertaining book.