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Tomato Soup with Stock
1 quart Brown Soup Stock 1 can tomatoes 1/2 teaspoon peppercorns 1 small bay leaf 3 cloves 3 sprigs thyme 4 tablespoons butter 1/3 cup flour Onion, Carrot, Celery, Raw ham (1/4 cup each cut in dice) Salt Pepper Cook onion, carrot, celery, and ham in butter five minutes, add flour, peppercorns, bay leaf, cloves, and thyme, and cook three minutes; then add tomatoes, cover, and cook slowly one hour. When cooked in oven it requires less watching. Rub through a strainer, add hot stock, and season with salt and pepper.
A classic thickened tomato soup built on a roux and a browned mirepoix rather than cream. The method is sound as written; most of the work of translation is in the ingredients.
- Brown soup stockA beef (or beef and veal) stock in which some of the meat and bones are browned before they go into the pot; period books brown them in a frying pan as often as in the oven. A good unsalted beef stock is the closest substitute; salt only at the end, since the ham adds salt of its own.
- "1 can tomatoes"The standard can of the period held roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups, on the order of 1 lb 3 oz. A 14 1/2-oz can is too little and a 28-oz can rather more than called for; about 20 oz of whole plum tomatoes, juice included, is closest.
- Raw hamNot sliced deli ham. This is uncooked cured ham — prosciutto crudo, speck, or a piece of pancetta all work. A quarter cup diced is enough to season the base.
- The rouxFour tablespoons butter to a third of a cup of flour is a slack roux, with rather more fat than flour by weight. Cook the full three minutes so the flour loses its raw taste, but keep it pale; the browner a roux gets, the less it thickens.
- Whole spicesPeppercorns, cloves and bay pushed against a sieve break up and leave grit. Tie them in cheesecloth or a tea ball so they lift out cleanly before straining.
- Oven cookingThe suggestion to move it to the oven is a good one, though the recipe gives no temperature. A low oven, somewhere around 300F, will hold a covered pot at a bare simmer for the hour without scorching the bottom.
- StrainingA food mill fitted with the medium disc does in two minutes what the original means by "rub through a strainer," and it holds back tomato skins and seeds.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 quarts once the stock goes in — four to six servings as a first course.