Tomato Sauce
3 slices bacon cut into small pieces 1 slice onion chopped 2 tablespoons flour 1 1/2 cups strained tomatoes 1 tablespoon chopped green peppers 1/2 teaspoon salt few gratings of nutmeg cayenne Put bacon into saucepan, add onion and brown slightly. Add flour, tomatoes which have been heated and strained, and stir until thick and smooth. Add seasoning and peppers. Pour over omelet before folding. Fold and serve hot.
A bacon-fat roux thickened with strained tomato, meant as a filling for a folded omelet. It comes together in about ten minutes and makes roughly 1 1/2 cups, enough for two to three omelets.
- Heat the tomatoes firstThe instruction to add tomatoes "which have been heated" is the hinge: warm, already-strained tomato blends into the hot bacon-fat roux more easily, which is why the recipe specifies it.
- Strained tomatoesIn 1920s usage this means canned or stewed tomatoes pushed through a sieve to remove skin and seed. Passata or tomato purée (not the concentrated paste sold as "tomato purée" in Britain) is the direct equivalent; 1 1/2 cups is 12 fl oz, about 355 ml.
- Fat and flour balanceThree slices of bacon render perhaps 2 tablespoons of fat, which is right for 2 tablespoons of flour. If the bacon is very lean, add butter to make up the difference or the roux will be dry and taste raw.
- Brown the bacon properly"Brown slightly" may attach to the onion, the bacon, or both; the sentence is ambiguous. Either way the bacon needs time to render its fat before the mixture takes colour.
- A slice of onionThe recipe measures onion by the slice off a whole bulb. Read it as roughly a tablespoon or two chopped.
- Nutmeg and cayenne"Few gratings" and the unmeasured cayenne are both meant as background. Both go in at the end with the salt, so start with a pinch of cayenne and taste.
- Green peppers go in lateThey are added with the seasoning, after the sauce has thickened. If you prefer them cooked through, add them with the onion instead.
- ConsistencyAim for a sauce that coats a spoon but still pours. If it stiffens while the omelet cooks, loosen it with a spoonful of hot water or stock.
The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, one of the great American promotional cookbooks of the early twentieth century, and its recipes reflect the plain, teachable style of domestic-science instruction then dominant in the United States. This sauce exists solely to fill an omelet. The formula invites comparison with the French tomato sauce found in Escoffier-era practice, where the roux would be made with salt pork or butter and the tomato cooked longer; here bacon fat does the work, and green pepper appears where a French cook would not have put it.