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Puree of Tomato, Andalouse
Have in a saucepan two ounces lean, raw ham, cut in very small pieces, half a small sliced carrot, one small sliced onion, two sliced leeks, half sliced green pepper, one branch sliced celery, two branches chopped parsley and half bean crushed garlic, adding one ounce butter; then cook the vegetables to a nice light brown, or about ten minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile. Add two heavy tablespoons flour, stir briskly; add one quart fresh crushed tomatoes, or same quantity canned tomatoes, and two quarts hot water; mix well, then add one saltspoon thyme, one sprig bay leaf, one clove, one teaspoon allspice, a teaspoon salt, one tablespoon sugar and half light teaspoon white pepper. Cover the pan and let slowly simmer for one hour and fifteen minutes. Boil two ounces vermicelli in a little white broth or hot water in a saucepan for eight minutes; strain the tomato puree through a Chinese strainer into another saucepan. Drain the vermicelli and add to the tomato; boil for five minutes. Pour into a hot soup tureen and serve.
A classical French tomato soup with an Andalusian garnish, built on a ham-and-vegetable base and finished with vermicelli. The proportions are for a full tureen; halve everything for a household pot.
- YieldOne quart of tomato plus two quarts of water, simmered down and strained, gives roughly two and a half quarts of finished soup — eight to ten servings. There is no clue to this in the original.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the thyme here is a small measure.
- The allspiceA full teaspoon of ground allspice will dominate everything. Given the whole clove and bay leaf listed beside it, the measure may well mean whole berries, strained out with the vegetables; if using ground, start with a quarter teaspoon.
- "Half bean" of garlicA bean of garlic is a single clove, so this is half a clove — a background note, not a garlic soup. "One sprig bay leaf" means one leaf.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. Press the solids hard with a ladle to extract the pulp; a food mill or a blender followed by a mesh sieve does the same work.
- Browning the baseTen minutes to a light brown is the hinge. Take the ham and vegetables past soft to genuinely coloured, and stir constantly once the flour goes in so it toasts rather than scorches — the flour is what carries the soup's body.
- White brothAn unbrowned stock, veal or chicken. Cooking the vermicelli separately and draining it keeps starch out of the strained puree; do not skip that step and boil the pasta in the soup.
- Vermicelli timingEight minutes plus five in the soup will overcook most modern dried vermicelli. Boil it to just short of tender, then give it the final five minutes in the hot puree.
- Canned tomatoesA quart is roughly one 28-ounce can with its juice plus a little more. Taste before committing the full tablespoon of sugar.
The recipe comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906); Filippini spent long years at Delmonico's in New York, where French classical nomenclature governed the menu even when the dish was plainly Mediterranean. In that system à l'andalouse generally signals tomato with sweet pepper, often with rice or a fine pasta as garnish — the green pepper and the vermicelli here are what earn the name rather than any direct link to a dish cooked in Andalusia. The construction is standard for the period: a mirepoix enriched with raw ham, a flour thickening rather than a puree of the vegetables themselves, a long slow simmer, and a final passage through the chinois. Filippini's offer of "fresh crushed tomatoes, or same quantity canned" reflects the fact that canned tomatoes were by then a routine kitchen staple.