Tomato Sauce
1 1/2 cups strained, stewed tomato or 1/2 cup condensed tomato and one cup water 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon salt Heat the tomato. Rub the flour and butter together. Pour over this the hot, but not boiling, tomato, slowly stirring. Let come to the boiling point, and cook until there is no raw taste of starch. A little onion or celery salt may be added if desired.
A plain flour-and-butter tomato sauce built as a beurre manié rather than a cooked roux, which is why the temperature instructions matter more than they look.
- The hinge: hot but not boilingThe recipe is explicit that the tomato should be hot but short of a boil when it meets the flour and butter, which helps the paste disperse smoothly. Heat the tomato until steaming but not bubbling, add it in a thin stream while stirring, and only then let the sauce come up to a boil.
- "Condensed tomato"Most likely a canned tomato pulp reduced to a thick purée, though the term was loose in this period. Canned tomato purée or passata diluted as directed is the closest match; tomato paste is thicker still, so use less.
- Strained stewed tomatoThe original assumes seeds and skins are pushed through a sieve. A can of whole tomatoes blitzed and strained gives the same body; using unstrained crushed tomato produces a rougher, thicker sauce that may need extra water.
- Cooking out the starchTwo tablespoons of flour need roughly five minutes at a bare simmer, stirring, before the pasty taste goes. Judge by taste rather than the clock, as the recipe itself directs.
- Butter and flour by weightTwo tablespoons of each is about 28 g butter to 16 g flour, which thickens 1 1/2 cups of liquid to a coating consistency. Cut the flour to one tablespoon if you want something loose enough to pour over vegetables.
- SaltA full teaspoon is aimed at unsalted home-stewed tomato. Canned purée is often salted already, so add half and correct at the end.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 cups, enough for four servings over croquettes, timbales, rice or boiled vegetables.
Meatless cookery of the early twentieth century leaned hard on sauces, because a plate of vegetables, rice or a nut loaf needed something to bind it into a proper course in the absence of pan drippings and meat gravy. A tomato sauce thickened with butter and flour did that work: it supplied acidity, colour and richness at once, and it could be made entirely from the storecupboard in winter. The wording also records a shift in the American pantry — the recipe offers stewed tomato or canned condensed tomato as equals, which by the 1910s was a fair assumption, since commercial tomato canning had become one of the largest branches of the industry.