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Tomato Cream Toast
1 1/2 cups stewed and strained tomato 1/2 cup scalded cream 1/4 teaspoon soda 3 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 6 slices toast Put butter in saucepan; when melted and bubbling, add flour, mixed with salt, and stir in gradually tomato, to which soda has been added, then add cream. Dip slices of toast in sauce. Serve as soon as made.
A tomato bechamel poured over toast, of the sort that once did duty as a light supper or a chafing-dish lunch. The whole thing takes about ten minutes and depends entirely on timing at the end.
- The soda is the hingeThe quarter teaspoon of baking soda neutralises enough of the tomato's acid to keep the cream from curdling when the two meet. Stir it into the tomato purée off the heat and expect it to foam; add the cream only after the tomato is smooth and hot. Skipping it, or adding cold cream to hot acid, gives a grainy sauce.
- Stewed and strained tomatoFresh or canned tomatoes cooked down and pushed through a sieve to remove skin and seed. A cup and a half of plain tomato puree or passata, unseasoned and with no garlic or herbs, is the equivalent.
- Scalded creamCream heated to just below a simmer, until it steams and shivers at the edge. Scalding was commonly recommended for raw dairy; with pasteurised cream it mainly serves to bring the cream up to temperature so it does not shock the sauce.
- Butter and flourThree tablespoons of each to the two cups of liquid, which by modern proportions is a medium sauce rather than a stiff one. Cook the flour in the bubbling butter briefly before adding liquid or the sauce tastes pasty.
- Dip, do not drownThe instruction is simply to pass the toast through the sauce rather than let it sit and soak; toast left standing in sauce collapses.
- Serve as soon as madeThe instruction is doing real work. A flour-thickened tomato sauce skins over within a couple of minutes and the toast softens fast, so have the plates and the diners ready before the sauce goes on.
- Yield and seasoningSix slices, which serves three as a light main course or six as a first course. Half a teaspoon of salt for the whole batch is modest; taste at the end, and a grind of pepper is worth adding.