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Tomato Cream Sauce
1/2 can tomatoes Bit of bay leaf Sprig of thyme 1 cup White Sauce I 1 stalk celery 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 slice onion Few grains cayenne 1/4 teaspoon soda Cook tomatoes twenty minutes with seasonings; rub through a strainer, add soda, then White Sauce. Serve with Baked Fish or Lobster Cutlets.
A short, sound sauce built on the old trick of neutralizing tomato acid with a pinch of soda so the milk sauce will not break. The whole thing takes about half an hour.
- The hinge: add the soda before the milkStir the quarter teaspoon of soda into the hot strained tomato and let it fizz down, off the heat, before the white sauce goes in. If you combine tomato and milk first, the acid will curdle the sauce and no amount of whisking will bring it back.
- Half a canA can of tomatoes in this period was usually taken to hold somewhere around 2 to 2 1/2 cups, so half a can is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups; sizes varied. Use canned whole or crushed tomatoes with their juice rather than passata, since the recipe expects you to strain out skin and seed.
- White Sauce ICheck the book's own White Sauce I; in books of this type the first-listed version is usually the thinner pouring sauce, on the order of 1 tablespoon each butter and flour to 1 cup milk. Have it hot and finished before the tomato is ready.
- Don't overdo the sodaA quarter teaspoon in this quantity is already at the top of the useful range. More gives a soapy, faintly metallic taste and flattens the tomato entirely.
- SeasoningsBay, thyme, a celery stalk and a slice of onion go in whole and are caught by the strainer; there is no need to chop anything. Twenty minutes of simmering is enough to draw the flavour and to cook down some of the liquid.
- StrainingPush through a fine sieve with a ladle or the back of a spoon. A food mill does the job faster; a blender does not, since it purees skins and seeds back into the sauce.
- Yield and consistencyAbout 2 cups, enough for four to six servings alongside baked fish. If it seems thin after combining, simmer a minute or two more, but keep it below a hard boil once the milk is in.
Tomato sauces thickened with milk or cream combine two elements that American cookery schools of the early twentieth century taught in the same breath: the flour-and-butter white sauce and the strained tomato puree. Because tomatoes were commonly canned goods in winter kitchens, and canned tomatoes are noticeably acidic, a pinch of baking soda to keep the two from curdling appears in a number of household manuals of this period. The suggested partners may also be suggestive: baked fish and lobster cutlets are pale dishes, and a tomato-cream sauce supplied colour and body without the eggs or reduced stock of a richer sauce.