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Tomato Soup with Stock
1 quart Brown Soup Stock 1 can tomatoes 2 ½ teaspoon peppercorns 1 small bay leaf 3 cloves 3 sprigs thyme 4 tablespoons butter 1/3 cup flour
A thickened, strained tomato soup built on meat stock rather than milk — the savory counterpart to the book's cream of tomato. The seasonings go in whole so they can be strained out.
- Brown Soup StockIn books of this period that generally means beef (shin and bones), part of it browned before long simmering, giving a dark, lightly gelatinous stock. A good unsalted beef stock is the modern equivalent; salt at the end, since reduction concentrates whatever is already there.
- One can tomatoesPeriod cans varied, running from roughly a pint to a quart, so the quantity is approximate; a 14-15 oz or 28 oz can, juice included, will both work depending on how thick you want it. Whole peeled tomatoes crushed by hand give better flavor than pre-diced, which are treated with calcium chloride and stay firm.
- The peppercorn quantityThe amount given for peppercorns is unclear as printed. Six to eight whole peppercorns suit a quart of stock and are easily strained out afterward.
- Whole seasoningsBay leaf, cloves, thyme and peppercorns are meant to be added whole and removed. Tie them in cheesecloth or a tea ball if you would rather not strain the whole pot.
- Simmering, not boilingFifteen to twenty minutes at a bare simmer is enough to draw the spices out. Longer and the cloves dominate and the thyme turns medicinal.
- The thickeningFour tablespoons butter to a third cup flour is a generous binding for the quart of stock plus the can of tomatoes: a thick soup by current taste. Cook the roux two or three minutes to lose the raw flour flavor, then add the hot liquid gradually and whisk smooth.
- Acid and lumpsTomato acid makes a flour-thickened soup more prone to catching and scorching on the pan bottom. Use a heavy pot, stir the base while it thickens, and hold it just below a boil once combined.
- YieldRoughly five to six cups after straining, depending on the size of the can; four servings as a first course, two as a meal.
Tomato soup appears twice over in Fannie Farmer's soup chapter, once bound with milk and once, as here, with brown stock, and the pairing shows how a nineteenth-century kitchen thought about soup: the same flavoring, carried on whichever base the household had going. The whole cloves, bay and thyme lifted out before serving are often read as an echo of the French bouquet garni that American cooking schools of the 1880s and 1890s were busy naturalizing, though the lineage is more plausible than documented, and the butter-and-flour finish points to the same training. Canned tomatoes made the recipe a year-round proposition; by the 1890s they were among the cheapest and most reliable canned goods in the American market, and cookbooks of the period lean on them heavily outside the summer months.