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Cream of Tomato Soup (Salt pepper and paprika)
Salt, pepper, and paprika to 2 tablespoonfuls flour 1 teaspoonful celery salt 1½ tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 cupful milk 2½ cupfuls strained tomato juice taste Pinch baking soda 1 tablespoonful tomato catsup Blend Crisco and flour together in saucepan over fire, add milk and bring to boiling point. Heat tomato juice, tomato catsup and add soda and seasonings. Just before serving add Crisco mixture to tomato juice and stir till boiling. Serve hot. Another method, is to cook 1 quart can of tomatoes with 1 quart of water twenty minutes, then rub through sieve. Blend 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco with 2 tablespoonfuls flour, add 1 tablespoonful sugar, salt, pepper, and red pepper to taste, and 1 tablespoonful tomato catsup. Add pinch of baking soda to tomatoes, then add gradually to Crisco mixture. Just bring to boiling point and serve with tablespoonful whipped cream on top of each plate.
The ingredient list has been scrambled in printing — words from the "to taste" line have drifted into the quantities — so read the method first and reconstruct the list from it. The workable version is a milk-thickened roux base folded into seasoned tomato at the last moment.
- The ingredient list as intendedWorking backwards from the method: 2 tablespoons flour, 1½ tablespoons Crisco (the "1/2 tablespoonfuls" is a broken 1½), 1 cup milk, 2½ cups strained tomato juice, 1 teaspoon celery salt, 1 tablespoon tomato catsup, a pinch of baking soda, and salt, pepper and paprika to taste.
- The hinge: combine at the last secondAdding the hot milk-and-flour mixture to the acidic tomato at the last moment is what helps keep the soup from curdling, and it only holds briefly. Bring it to a boil, stir, and serve — it is liable to separate if held over heat or reheated.
- Why the sodaThe pinch of baking soda neutralises some of the tomato's acid so the milk proteins are less likely to break. Use no more than a pinch; excess soda tastes soapy and flattens the tomato flavour.
- CriscoStill sold, and the recipe is an advertisement for it — the whole book is. Butter works and tastes better here; any neutral solid fat or oil gives the same roux.
- Cook the roux properly"Blend Crisco and flour together in saucepan over fire" means cook the paste a minute or two before the milk goes in, or the soup carries a raw-flour taste. Add the milk gradually and whisk.
- "Strained tomato juice"In 1913 this meant fresh or canned tomatoes pushed through a sieve, not modern bottled juice, which is thinner and saltier. Passata or sieved canned tomatoes are the closest match; adjust salt at the end if using commercial juice.
- The second methodA quart of canned tomatoes to a quart of water gives a much thinner soup, sweetened with a tablespoon of sugar and enriched only by whipped cream on top. "Red pepper" here is cayenne, used sparingly.
- YieldAbout 3½ cups — four small first-course servings, or two as a main. Doubling is straightforward; make the roux in a separate pan.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a product no one had asked for: a hydrogenated vegetable shortening, solid at room temperature, sold as a cleaner and more economical stand-in for lard and butter. Crisco is named throughout the book, and cream of tomato soup was a sensible place to plant the flag — it was already a fixture of the period's household cookery, given a push by the Campbell's condensed version introduced in the 1890s, and the roux that opens the recipe is exactly the kind of small, repeated, unglamorous use of fat that would build a habit. The pinch of baking soda belongs to the same era of anxiety about tomato and milk curdling, a trick that appears in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth century and lingers in family recipes still.