No. 549

Tomato Sauce

Sauce aux Tomates

Put a quarter of a pound of butter in a saucepan, with half a pound of carrots, half a pound of onions, half a pound of bacon or unsmoked ham, all cut in quarter inch squares, a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf, and four cloves; when fried colorless, and eight pounds of tomatoes cut in two and well pressed; season with salt and mignonette, and moisten with a quart of moistening (No. 189), then cook it all slowly for forty minutes. Make a blond roux (No. 163) with a quarter of a pound of butter, and a quarter of a pound of flour; dilute it with one quart of white stock (No. 422), and the tomatoes; then strain the whole through a fine sieve or tammy (No. 159), let it boil again, despumate the surface, and reduce it until it becomes the consistency of a sauce.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classic French mother-sauce tomate in Ranhofer's grand-hotel proportions: eight pounds of tomatoes and two quarts of liquid, built on a mirepoix and a blond roux. The scaling and a handful of kitchen-French terms are the only real obstacles.

Scale it downAs written this yields several quarts of finished sauce, enough for a banquet service. Quartering everything (2 lb tomatoes, 1 oz butter for the vegetables and 1 oz for the roux, 2 oz each carrot, onion and ham, 1 oz flour, 1 cup each of the two liquids) gives a manageable batch.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked white peppercorns, sometimes tied in a cloth and fished out before straining. Cracked white pepper from a mortar is the closest thing; it is a texture and a perfume, not the fine grey powder in a shaker.
Moistening (No. 189)Ranhofer's "moistening" is a light broth used to wet a braise. Any unsalted light chicken or veal stock stands in, and it should be unsalted because the sauce reduces at the end.
Blond rouxCooked past raw flour to the colour of straw and no further. Give it five to seven minutes over moderate heat, stirring; a brown roux here will muddy the tomato and thicken less per ounce.
Press the tomatoes"Cut in two and well pressed" means squeezing out the seeds and the watery jelly around them. Skipping this leaves a sauce that tastes thin and needs much longer reduction to correct.
Fried colorlessThe vegetables and ham should sweat in butter without taking on any colour at all — moderate heat, a lid ajar, ten to fifteen minutes. Colour here pushes the sauce toward a sauce espagnole.
Bacon or unsmoked hamHe means salt pork or a mild unsmoked cure such as pancetta or a piece of jambon blanc. Modern smoked supermarket bacon will dominate the finished sauce; if it is all you have, blanch it first in boiling water for two minutes.
Tammy and despumingA tammy is a fine woollen or linen straining cloth; a chinois lined with a doubled square of muslin does the same work. "Despumate" is simply to skim — set the pan half off the burner so the fat and scum collect on the cool side and lift them off with a ladle.
Final consistencyAfter straining, expect another 20 to 30 minutes of gentle reduction. It is done when it coats a spoon and a finger drawn through leaves a clean track.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some three decades directing the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and the book's numbered cross-references — the roux at No. 163, the white stock at No. 422 — betray its origin as a professional brigade's working system rather than a domestic cookbook. Sauce tomate took its place among the foundational French sauces in Escoffier's better-known scheme, published a decade after Ranhofer wrote; the roux, the pork, and the mirepoix all mark it as a nineteenth-century French sauce that happens to contain tomatoes, quite unlike an Italian pomodoro. The sheer quantity of tomatoes is itself a period signal: by the 1890s the American tomato crop was cheap and abundant enough that a New York kitchen could press eight pounds of them, discard the seeds and juice, and reduce what remained to a few quarts of sauce.