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Tomato Broth in Cups
Cut in thin pieces one medium carrot, one onion, two leeks, one green pepper and two ounces raw lean ham. Place these articles in a saucepan with a tablespoon butter and gently brown ten minutes, occasionally mixing meanwhile, then add one branch parsley, one sound bean crushed garlic, one sprig thyme, one bay leaf, one clove, one and a half quarts broth, one quart well-cleaned fresh crushed, red tomatoes, one teaspoon salt and one teaspoon sugar. Lightly mix, then slowly boil one hour and fifteen minutes. Press broth through sieve into a basin, then through a cheesecloth into six cups and serve with a plate of oysterettes, separately.
A clear tomato consommé, strained twice and served in bouillon cups rather than soup plates. Nothing here is difficult, but a few of the terms need translating.
- "One sound bean crushed garlic"This means one whole, unblemished clove of garlic, crushed. "Bean" for a garlic clove turns up occasionally in this period; the modern word is clove.
- What "broth" means hereA light beef or veal stock, unsalted or barely salted, since a teaspoon of salt is added later. Commercial stock is usually salted, so hold the salt until you taste at the end.
- The double straining is the pointThrough a sieve first to remove the vegetables and aromatics, then through cheesecloth to catch the fine tomato pulp. Skipping the cloth gives you a cloudy tomato soup instead of the near-translucent broth intended.
- Do not press hard through the clothLet it drip or coax it gently. Forcing pulp through the cheesecloth defeats the clarification you just spent an hour building.
- "Gently brown ten minutes"Medium-low heat, aiming for colour on the ham and softness in the vegetables without scorching. Burnt bits will carry bitterness straight through the strainer.
- "Slowly boil" is a simmerKeep it at a bare tremble for the full hour and a quarter. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and pulp into the liquid and clouds it.
- Raw lean hamAn uncooked cured ham — prosciutto crudo, speck or a piece of raw country ham. Two ounces is a flavouring, not a meat component; ordinary cooked deli ham gives much less.
- TomatoesA quart of crushed fresh tomatoes is roughly 2 lb. Out of season, whole canned plum tomatoes crushed by hand are a fair substitute.
- Yield and serviceSix cups, as stated, meaning six bouillon cups rather than soup plates — a first course, not a meal. Oysterettes are small salted oyster crackers; any plain salted cracker serves.
Serving soup "in cups" was a mark of the formal American dinner in the years around 1900: a clear broth, drunk from a two-handled bouillon cup between the oysters and the fish, needed no spoon and no plate-clearing. The International Cook Book belongs to that Delmonico's-influenced tradition, where a tomato consommé was built like any other clear soup — ham and root vegetables sweated for depth, aromatics for lift, then long slow cooking and a punishing strain to get transparency. The teaspoon of sugar is not sweetening so much as correction, a common way of balancing the acidity of tomatoes. Oysterettes, the little crackers served alongside, were sold in American groceries as a soup and oyster accompaniment.