Tomato Bisque
1 cup strained tomato 2 cups water 1/4 cup peanut butter 1 teaspoon salt Rub the nut butter smooth with the water. Add strained tomato and salt, and cook in a double boiler fifteen minutes.
Tomato Macaroni or Vermicelli Soup 1 cup strained tomato 2 cups water 4 teaspoons peanut butter 1 1/2 tablespoons fine macaroni or vermicelli 1 teaspoon salt Rub the nut butter smooth with the water. Add the tomato and salt, and heat in a double boiler. Add the macaroni, and cook from thirty to forty minutes. To make tomato rice soup, use rice instead of macaroni.
A dairy-free "bisque" from the vegetarian-hygienic school of cookery, thickened and enriched with peanut butter rather than cream. It comes together in under twenty minutes and needs only a few adjustments.
- Rub the butter smooth firstThis is the hinge. Work the peanut butter to a thin paste with a few tablespoons of the water before adding the rest, or it will stay in lumps that never disperse. A whisk or a quick blitz with a stick blender does it faster than a spoon.
- Peanut butter to useThe period product was ground peanuts, unsweetened and unstabilised, sometimes with salt added. Use natural unsweetened peanut butter; modern sweetened, stabilised brands will make the soup faintly candied and can separate oddly with acid.
- "Strained tomato"Cooked tomato pushed through a sieve to remove skin and seeds. Tomato passata is the direct equivalent; a cup of canned crushed tomato pressed through a strainer also works. Canned tomato juice is thinner and more heavily salted, so cut the added salt if you use it.
- Why the double boilerPeanut butter scorches and tomato catches over direct heat, and the acid can make the emulsion break. The double boiler is insurance rather than tradition. A heavy saucepan over low heat with steady stirring works if you watch it.
- SaltA teaspoon of salt in three cups of liquid is on the high side by current taste, especially with salted peanut butter and canned tomato. Start with half and adjust.
- The pasta versionThirty to forty minutes suits the very fine dried vermicelli of the period. Modern fine macaroni or broken vermicelli is done in eight to twelve minutes; cook it to the package time or it will collapse into the soup. For the rice variant, allow about twenty minutes for long-grain white rice.
- YieldThree cups, so two to three first-course servings. Doubling is straightforward; the pasta and rice versions thicken considerably as they stand and will want extra water on reheating.
Peanut butter soups like this one belong to the American health-food cookery that grew out of the vegetarian sanitarium kitchens of the late nineteenth century, where ground nut pastes were promoted as a substitute for meat, butter and cream. The name bisque originally denoted a French shellfish soup finished with cream, though by this period American usage had already stretched it to cover smooth, rich soups generally; here it signals richness and smooth texture achieved without any animal product. The nut-and-tomato pairing was practical as well as ideological, since peanut butter supplied fat and body that milk would otherwise have provided, and the acidity of tomato kept the result from tasting flatly nutty. Groundnut soups thickened with peanuts are much older and far more widespread in West African cooking, though this particular recipe reflects the American reform-diet tradition rather than that lineage.