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Puree of Tomato with Tapioca
Have in a saucepan one ounce lean, raw ham cut into small pieces, half small sliced carrot, one sliced onion, two sliced leeks, half sliced green pepper, one branch sliced celery, two branches chopped parsley and half bean finely crushed garlic, adding one ounce good butter; then cook the vegetables to a nice light brown, or about ten minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile. Add two tablespoons flour, briskly stir; add one and a half pints fresh, crushed red tomatoes or same quantity canned tomatoes and two quarts hot broth or water; mix well, then add one saltspoon thyme, one sprig bay leaf, one clove, one teaspoon allspice, a heavy teaspoon salt, one tablespoon fine sugar and half light teaspoon white pepper. Cover the pan and let slowly simmer for one hour and fifteen minutes.
Plunge two ounces tapioca into half pint boiling broth. Mix well with a wooden spoon for one minute and let cook for fifteen minutes, occasionally mixing. Strain the tomato puree through a Chinese strainer into another saucepan, add the tapioca with broth to the tomato; gently mix, boil for five minutes, pour into a tureen and serve.
A classic French-style tomato soup thickened twice, once with a roux and once with tapioca cooked separately in broth. The measurements are Gilded Age kitchen shorthand; here is what they mean.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So a saltspoon of thyme is 1/4 tsp dried, or about a teaspoon of fresh leaves.
- "Half bean" of garlicA bean here means a clove; use half a clove, finely crushed. The garlic is background seasoning, not a flavor note.
- "One sprig bay leaf"One bay leaf. With the thyme it forms the usual aromatic seasoning, and since the soup is strained you can tie the herbs and the clove in cloth or simply fish them out.
- The allspiceA full teaspoon of ground allspice would be a great deal in two quarts of soup. The original may mean whole berries rather than ground; if so, 4 to 6 berries removed at straining would be closer to the mark.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. Press the solids through with a ladle or the back of a spoon so the vegetables enrich the puree rather than being discarded; a food mill does the same work.
- TapiocaUse small pearl or granulated tapioca, not instant. The point of cooking it separately in a half pint of broth is that it stays clear and suspended; dropped straight into the tomato it clumps and clouds. Stir hard for the first minute or the pearls fuse.
- The hamOne ounce of lean raw ham is a seasoning, not a meat course. Prosciutto crudo, unsmoked pancetta or a scrap of country ham all work; smoked bacon changes the character of the soup.
- Simmer and reductionAn hour and a quarter at a bare simmer, covered, is as written. The pan holds roughly three quarts of liquid all told and loses little under a lid, so expect something on the order of two and a half to three quarts of finished soup, serving eight to ten as a first course.
- The sugarA tablespoon reads as a lot, but it is balancing the acidity of the tomatoes. Add half, taste after straining, and adjust.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), written by a chef long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the house style plainly: a French mirepoix base, a scrap of raw ham for depth, a long covered simmer, and a strainer at the end so nothing coarse reaches the tureen. The tapioca is the period touch. Cassava starch reached European and American kitchens through the colonial trade and by the late nineteenth century was a standard soup garnish, valued because the little translucent pearls thickened a consommé or puree without the muddiness of more flour. A tomato puree finished with tapioca belonged to a whole family of such constructions, alongside sago, vermicelli or royale custard, all of them ways to give a strained soup something to occupy the spoon.