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Tomato Sauce
1/2 lb. tomatoes or I can of I turnip tomatoes I onion A bunch sweet herbs 1/2 pint (I cup) stock or water 1/2 teaspoonful salt I turnip 2 ozs. (2 heaping tablespoonfuls) butter I oz. (I heaping tablespoonful) flour 4 whole peppers Bunch of parsley A few drops of red coloring Blade of mace I carrot I bay leaf Put the butter into a casserole with the carrot, turnip, onion, and tomatoes cut up into pieces, add the herbs, parsley, bay leaf, whole peppers, and mace, and fry for ten minutes, then add the flour, the stock or water, salt, and red coloring, stir till boiling, then simmer slowly for forty minutes, rub through a sieve, reheat, and serve.
A classic brown-and-simmer tomato sauce built on a mirepoix rather than on tomatoes alone. The ingredient list has come through the scanner scrambled — the turnip and the tomatoes both appear twice — so read it as one measure of each vegetable.
- The vesselHere "casserole" is clearly a pot used on direct heat rather than a covered baking dish: the sauce is fried, boiled and simmered. Any heavy saucepan or Dutch oven works; the whole recipe is stovetop.
- Quantities, sorted outHalf a pound of tomatoes (about 225 g) or one can, size unstated; one onion, one carrot, one turnip; 2 oz butter (4 tablespoons); 1 oz flour (about 3 tablespoons by modern level measure, though the book calls it one heaping spoonful); 1 cup stock or water.
- Whole peppers and mace"Four whole peppers" means four peppercorns, not chilies. A blade of mace is a strip of the lacy husk around a nutmeg — sold in Indian and spice shops; a pinch of ground mace substitutes.
- Sweet herbsA period shorthand for thyme, marjoram and savory, usually tied with the parsley and bay into a bundle. A few sprigs of thyme plus the parsley and bay is a fair reading.
- Skip the coloringThe red coloring appears to be cosmetic. Modern canned tomatoes need none; leave it out entirely.
- The hinge: brown the vegetables properlyThe hinge: the ten-minute fry -- The recipe fries the cut vegetables in the butter for ten minutes before the flour goes in. Keep the heat moderate so nothing catches.
- SievingRubbing through a sieve was the usual route to smoothness. A food mill gives much the same result faster; a blender gives a different, lighter texture and will not strain out tomato skins and seeds, so pass it afterwards if you want the original finish.
- YieldRoughly a cup and a half of finished sauce, judging by the quantities. It thickens as it stands; loosen with stock when reheating.
Sauces like this belong to the Anglo-French kitchen hierarchy of the printed cookery books of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which a tomato sauce was not primarily Italian but a variation on the classic brown sauce: fat, root vegetables, flour, stock, a bouquet of herbs, and long simmering followed by the sieve. The turnip and carrot are there for sweetness and body. Casserole cookery was popular in America in the 1900s and 1910s, the selling point being that a single pot could handle browning, simmering and serving — which may be why a sauce recipe of this kind appears in a book ostensibly about casseroles at all.