Home › The World's Kitchen › Puree of Tomato, Julienne
Puree of Tomato, Julienne
Melt an ounce butter in saucepan, add ounce lean, finely chopped raw ham, a sliced carrot, a sliced onion, two branches parsley, half a chopped green pepper, a bean garlic, teaspoon whole black pepper, clove, bay leaf, sprig thyme and nicely brown for fifteen minutes, occasionally mixing meanwhile; add one quart fresh crushed tomatoes with two quarts white broth and season with a light tablespoon each salt and sugar. (If any cooked bones of beef or chicken are on hand add them to the soup.) Cover pan and let gently boil for one hour and fifteen minutes. Heat in a saucepan one and a half tablespoons melted butter, add four tablespoons flour, stir briskly while browning for two minutes, then add tomato soup. Mix well, let cook for ten minutes, strain soup through sieve into a basin, then through Chinese strainer into another saucepan and keep hot. Cut in short, thin julienne-shape strips a small carrot, turnip, white part of one leek, small onion, two branches celery and a quarter very small cabbage. Place these articles in a saucepan with a half ounce butter, gill water, half teaspoon each salt and sugar. Mix well, cover vegetables with a buttered paper, place lid on pan, then set in oven for forty-five minutes. Remove, pour all contents of pan into the tomato puree, mix well, boil five minutes, pour in a soup tureen and serve.
A classical tomato puree finished with a separately braised julienne garnish. The two halves are cooked apart on purpose: the puree is strained smooth, the vegetables stay crisp-edged and distinct.
- White brothA light, unbrowned stock of veal or chicken, unsalted or barely salted. Two quarts of low-sodium chicken stock stands in; if you use commercial stock, hold back most of the tablespoon of salt until the soup is strained.
- A bean of garlicOne clove.
- A gillHalf a cup, for the water in the julienne pan.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. The double straining is the point of the dish: coarse sieve first to break down the pulp and remove skins, seeds, peppercorns and bones, then the chinois for texture. A food mill plus a fine sieve does the same work.
- Oven for the julienneNo temperature is given. Treat it as a moderate oven, 325-350F, for a gentle braise; the buttered paper laid directly on the vegetables is a cartouche, which keeps the small amount of liquid from evaporating and lets the vegetables steam rather than roast. Forty-five minutes will leave them very soft by current taste, and 20-25 minutes is usually enough for strips this thin.
- The rouxFour tablespoons flour to a tablespoon and a half of butter is a dry, sandy mixture rather than a smooth paste, and the two minutes of browning takes it barely past blond. Add the hot soup gradually and whisk, or it will lump before you strain it.
- Ham as seasoningThe ounce of lean raw ham is aromatic, not a meat component. Prosciutto or unsmoked pancetta gives the right effect; heavily smoked supermarket ham will dominate the tomato.
- YieldThree quarts of liquid go into the pot, and rather less than that comes out after simmering and straining, plus the julienne.
Julienne is a knife cut before it is a garnish, and by the late nineteenth century "a la julienne" on a menu signalled a clear or pureed soup finished with matchstick vegetables that had been sweated separately in butter so they kept their shape and colour. The method here, with sugar and salt added to the vegetable pan and a buttered paper pressed over the top, is standard French professional practice of the period for cooking root vegetables gently in butter, though it sits closer to what was called etuver than to glazing proper. The recipe's larger structure is equally of its moment: a mirepoix browned with raw ham and whole spices, a long simmer with any leftover cooked bones thrown in, a flour roux to give body, then two strainings to remove every trace of the aromatics that flavoured it. That habit of building a soup and then erasing all visible evidence of how it was built belongs to the hotel and restaurant kitchens, and it explains the labour: the finished tureen shows only smooth red puree and a scatter of bright vegetable strips.