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Puree of Tomato
Pour 2 ounces of American Tomato Soup into a cup, add 1 ounce sweet cream, fill with boiling water, and season with salt, pepper and celery salt. A little malted milk may be added to thicken.
A hot fountain drink rather than a bowl of soup: a concentrate cut with cream and boiling water and served in a cup. The proportions only make sense once you know that "American Tomato Soup" was a bottled fountain base, not the canned soup on a supermarket shelf.
- The ounces are fluid ouncesFountain formulas were generally measured by volume. Two ounces is a quarter cup of base, one ounce of cream is two tablespoons, and "fill with boiling water" means to the top of the cup.
- "American Tomato Soup"Evidently a commercial fountain concentrate rather than the canned soup on a supermarket shelf. The nearest modern stand-in is a strong tomato paste thinned with stock, or a tomato bouillon powder made up at double strength, since ordinary condensed tomato soup is already diluted and will taste thin here.
- Add the water to the base, not the reverseAdd the water last, as the recipe directs -- Boiling water poured onto cream sitting alone in the cup can curdle it, especially against the acid of the tomato. Stir the cream into the concentrate first, then pour.
- Malted milk powderStill sold, and still the same product: malted barley and wheat flour with dried milk. A teaspoon is plenty; it thickens slightly and adds a faint sweetness that reads as odd to modern palates in a savoury drink.
- Celery saltCalled for alongside the plain salt rather than as a garnish; a scant pinch is enough, since a commercial base may already be salted.
- YieldOne cup, served hot. It does not hold or reheat well once the cream is in.
Soda fountains sold far more than sweet drinks. By the 1910s and 1920s the fountain was competing directly with the lunch counter, and hot savoury cups — tomato bouillon, clam bouillon, beef tea, chicken broth — were a standard part of the winter trade, served with the same speed as a chocolate malted. Prepared tomato soup bases were sold to fountain operators, which is why a formula like this one names a proprietary product rather than listing tomatoes. The "puree" in the title is a bit of menu dressing; nothing is puréed at the counter. What the drink really records is the moment when a druggist's soda fountain became a place to get lunch, and when malted milk powder, marketed as a wholesome invalid food, turned up in savoury as well as sweet cups.