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Hot Tomato Beef Bouillon, 1
One-half ounce beef tea extract, 1 ounce tomato bouillon extract. Fill cup with hot milk and serve with graham wafers, salt and pepper.
A winter fountain drink rather than a soup: two concentrated commercial extracts thinned with hot milk in the cup. The whole thing hinges on temperature and acid control.
- Keep the milk below a boilTomato extract is acidic, and boiling milk poured onto it can curdle in the cup. Heat the milk to just short of a simmer, then add it to the extracts in a slow stream while stirring.
- What "beef tea extract" wasA dark, salty meat concentrate of the Liebig's or Bovril type. Modern beef bouillon paste or concentrate is the nearest equivalent; salt levels vary between brands, so taste before seasoning.
- Tomato bouillon extractA proprietary fountain product, essentially a seasoned tomato concentrate, and no longer sold under that name. Tomato paste thinned with a little hot water, or a tomato-based bouillon concentrate, occupies the same place.
- The measurements are by volumeThe measurements may be by volume -- If read as liquid measure, the half ounce and ounce come to one tablespoon of beef extract to two of tomato. These extracts were also sold as pastes measured by weight, so the reading is not certain. Because concentrates vary enormously in strength, start with less and taste.
- Graham wafersThin, plain graham crackers, not the cinnamon-sugar kind. A plain water cracker or a plain graham cracker is closest to what was intended.
- Salt and pepper at the endThe recipe lists them as served alongside, so season in the cup after tasting. Between the two extracts there is already a good deal of salt.
American soda fountains ran year-round, which meant they needed something to sell when nobody wanted ice cream, and from the 1890s onward the answer was a "hot cup" menu: beef tea, clam bouillon, hot chocolate, hot malted milk. Concentrated meat extracts made this possible; Liebig's Extract of Meat and its many imitators had been marketed since the mid-nineteenth century as both a convenience and a restorative, and beef tea carried a strong association with invalid cookery and nourishment for the delicate. Serving it stretched with hot milk rather than water pushed it further toward the tonic end of the counter, and pairing it with graham wafers, plain crackers descended from Sylvester Graham's dietary reform movement, gave the whole thing a wholesome cast. Fountain manuals of this period, aimed at druggists working a marble counter with a steam spigot, are full of such recipes: two pumps of something from a jar, hot liquid, and a garnish, formulated for speed rather than for a kitchen.