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Tomato Curry
2 cups tomatoes 1 tablespoon butter 2 tablespoons flour 1 tablespoon curry Salt and red pepper Pinch of soda 1 cup cream Cook the tomatoes in the chafing dish; add the flour, well rubbed in the butter, also the curry, salt and a dash of red pepper. When the mixture thickens add a pinch of soda; stir and add the cream.
Serve on toasted bread or crackers.
A chafing-dish sauce built like a curried tomato cream, thickened with beurre manié and finished with a pinch of soda to keep the cream from breaking. Two things decide whether it works: the soda and the heat.
- The soda is the hingeA pinch of baking soda (no more than 1/8 teaspoon) neutralizes enough tomato acid that the cream will not curdle when it goes in. Add it before the cream, let it foam out, then lower the heat. Too much soda gives a soapy, flat flavor and a dull brownish color.
- Cream in last, off a low flameOnce the cream is in, keep the pan below a simmer. Chafing dishes over an alcohol or spirit lamp are forgiving here; a modern gas burner is not, and boiling will separate the sauce even with the soda.
- "2 cups tomatoes"In a book of this period this most likely means canned tomatoes with their liquid, or peeled fresh ones stewed down. A 14-15 oz can, broken up, is close enough, though slightly short of 2 cups. Cook it down for a few minutes before the flour goes in or the sauce will be thin and raw-tasting.
- "1 tablespoon curry"Curry powder, and a full tablespoon of it against 2 cups of tomato and 1 cup of cream. Blends varied a great deal, so a tablespoon of a fresh modern powder may read much stronger than intended; start with 2 teaspoons and taste. Bloom it in the butter-flour paste rather than dumping it into the liquid.
- Beurre maniéRubbing the flour into the butter -- "Flour well rubbed in the butter" is 2 tablespoons flour worked cold into 1 tablespoon butter, then added to the hot tomato in small pieces. At two parts flour to one of butter it is flour-heavy for a beurre manié, so the paste will be crumbly rather than smooth.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not a fresh chile. A dash means a scant 1/8 teaspoon.
- YieldAbout three cups of sauce, enough for four servings on toast as a light supper or luncheon dish, or six or eight as a cracker spread.
Chafing-dish cookery had a real vogue in American households from the 1890s through the 1920s, and cookbooks of the period often gave it its own chapter. The appeal was that a spirit lamp and a shallow pan let a hostess cook at the table without a servant or a hot range, which suited late suppers, bachelor lodgings and college rooms. The repertoire ran heavily to creamed and cheese-bound things served on toast, and "curry" in this context means curry powder used as a single seasoning rather than any Indian dish. Commercial curry powder had been sold in Britain and America since the nineteenth century and was treated much like celery salt or paprika, a bottled flavor to lift bland cream sauces; the soda trick for keeping tomato and cream from curdling was common advice in the same books, and turns up in cream of tomato soup recipes of the era.