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Puree of Turnips, Tomatee
Peel eight medium, white turnips, finely slice and place in a saucepan with an ounce melted butter and gently cook for fifteen minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile, then add two medium, peeled raw potatoes cut in small pieces and two finely sliced onions. Tie in a bunch two branches parsley, one branch chervil, one bay leaf, a sprig thyme, two cloves, and add to the pan. Moisten with a quart of broth and two quarts water, season with two teaspoons salt and two teaspoons pepper, sharply mix with wooden spoon until it comes to a boil, then slowly boil one and a half hours. Press through sieve into a basin, then through a Chinese strainer into a saucepan, let come to a boil, add a pint of tomato sauce, mix well, boil for ten minutes, pour into a hot soup tureen and serve.
A classic French-style vegetable purée soup: turnips sweated in butter, bulked with potato, thinned with stock, then finished with tomato sauce. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the quantities need adjusting before you start.
- Cut the pepper, watch the saltTwo teaspoons of pepper in a soup this size is punishing by modern palates; start with a quarter teaspoon and adjust at the end. Two teaspoons of salt is reasonable only if your broth is unsalted — with commercial stock, salt after straining.
- The liquid is the real ratioA quart of broth to two quarts of water is a thin, old-fashioned dilution meant to be reduced over ninety minutes. If you want a soup with body, use all stock, or cut the water to one quart.
- Chinese strainerA chinois — the conical fine-mesh strainer. The double straining (coarse sieve, then chinois) is what makes a purée soup smooth; a blender followed by a single pass through a fine sieve does the same work in less time.
- Sweating the turnipsThe fifteen minutes in butter before any liquid goes in is the hinge. It drives off the raw sulphurous edge of the turnip and builds sweetness; rush it and the soup tastes sharp no matter how long it boils.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh. Use flat-leaf parsley with a little tarragon, or leave it out — it is a background note in a bundle that also holds bay, thyme and cloves. Remove the bundle before straining.
- Tomato sauceNot pasta sauce. In period professional kitchens this would most likely be a plain flour-thickened tomato purée made with stock, closer to a thin tomato velouté. A pint of good passata reduced slightly, or canned crushed tomatoes cooked down and sieved, gives the right effect.
- YieldThree quarts of liquid reduced over an hour and a half, plus a pint of sauce, gives roughly eight to ten first-course servings.
"Tomatee" appears to be a variant spelling of tomato. The dish belongs to the standard repertoire of purée soups — purée de navets — thickened not with cream but with potato and pushed through a chinois until it is velvet. Turnips earned their place in that repertoire by being cheap, storable through winter and sweet enough to carry a soup on their own, which is also why they appear more often in nineteenth-century menus than in ours. Tomato sauce was counted among the leading sauces of professional kitchens by the early 1900s, kept ready and stirred into dishes that wanted colour and acidity.