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Tomato Sauce III
1/4 cup butter 1 slice carrot Sprig of parsley 1 cup stewed and strained 1 slice onion tomatoes Bit of bay leaf Sprig of thyme 1 cup Brown Stock Salt and pepper 1/4 cup flour Brown the butter with carrot, onion, bay leaf, thyme, and parsley; remove seasonings, add flour, stir until well browned, then add tomatoes and stock. Bring to boilingpoint, and strain.
The verbatim text runs two printed ingredient columns together, which is why the tomatoes and the onion appear to have traded places. Read it as: 1/4 cup butter, 1/4 cup flour, 1 slice carrot, 1 slice onion, a bit of bay leaf, a sprig each of thyme and parsley, 1 cup stewed and strained tomatoes, 1 cup Brown Stock, salt and pepper.
- The hinge: brown the flour, not the butterBoth fat and flour get browned here: the book says to brown the butter with the aromatics, then to remove them, add the flour and stir until well browned. Give the flour several minutes of steady stirring over moderate heat -- underdone it leaves a raw-flour taste that simmering will not remove, and scorched it turns the sauce bitter.
- Butter will burn before the vegetables give much upWhole butter's milk solids begin to brown somewhere above about 250F and will blacken if pushed, so keep the heat moderate and let the carrot, onion and herbs sizzle gently before removing them; clarified butter takes more heat if you want more colour.
- "Stewed and strained tomatoes"This means cooked-down tomatoes pushed through a sieve to remove skin and seed, roughly what is now sold as passata or strained tomato puree. A cup of canned crushed tomatoes, simmered briefly and sieved, is the same thing.
- Brown StockThe book's own recipe uses shin of beef with the bone, part of the meat browned in fat, then simmered for hours with vegetables. A good unsalted beef stock stands in. Since this sauce reduces very little, a weak stock shows immediately.
- Proportions and thicknessEqual quarter-cups of fat and flour to two cups of liquid gives a fairly thick sauce, meant to nap fish or a slice of meat and stay put. Thin with additional stock if you want something more pourable.
- Strain, and season lastStrain -- Straining catches roux lumps and tomato solids. The recipe lists salt and pepper without saying when they go in; adding them after straining lets you taste the finished sauce.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 cups after straining, enough for six servings alongside broiled fish, meatballs or a plain roast.
Farmer gives three tomato sauces in a row, and this one is the most French of them: it is essentially sauce tomate built on a brown roux and brown stock, the version generally traced to nineteenth-century French professional kitchens. The tell is the aromatics steeped in fat and then discarded, and the final straining, both of which suggest restaurant practice. It also reflects how tomatoes reached the American kitchen in 1896: canned or as home-stewed pulp, put through a sieve, since the food mill was still some way off. A sauce like this was expected to do the work that a pan reduction does now, standing ready in a saucepan to be spooned over whatever the fishmonger or butcher had sent up.