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Tomato Sauce (Cook together one) (II)
Cook together one tablespoonful of butter and two tablespoonfuls of flour, add one cup of strained tomato, simmer seven minutes, add one cup of sweet cream, bring to boiling point; add a pinch of soda; season to taste; serve. This sauce can be served appropriately with either croquettes or cutlets of chicken, sweetbreads, lobster or fish.
A short white-roux tomato velouté, thinned with cream rather than stock. The whole thing hinges on the order of operations: the tomato goes in before the cream, and the soda goes in at the very end.
- Why the sodaThe pinch of baking soda neutralises enough of the tomato's acid to keep the cream from breaking when it hits boiling point. Add it after the cream, off the direct heat, and stir; too much and the sauce takes on a flat, soapy taste and a dull brick colour.
- "Strained tomato"Not tomato sauce or paste. It means fresh or canned tomatoes cooked down and pushed through a sieve to remove skin and seed — a thin purée. Passata is the closest thing on a shelf today; canned crushed tomato pressed through a strainer works as well.
- "Sweet cream"Fresh, unsoured, unsweetened cream, as opposed to the sour cream that period kitchens also kept on hand. Use heavy or whipping cream; the fat is what keeps the sauce stable.
- The rouxOne tablespoon butter to two of flour is a dry, stiff paste rather than a pourable roux. Cook it a minute or two over moderate heat without letting it colour, then whisk the tomato in gradually or it will lump.
- Seven minutes means seven minutesThat simmer is what cooks the raw taste out of the flour. Cut it short and the sauce tastes pasty no matter how well seasoned.
- Season last"Season to taste" is left open, though salt and pepper are the likely intent, and it belongs after the cream and soda are in — the soda shifts the balance noticeably, and a sauce salted before it goes in will read as over-salted after.
- YieldRoughly two cups, going by the cup of tomato and cup of cream; enough to sauce croquettes or cutlets for several. It thickens as it stands; loosen with a spoonful of cream rather than water.
Sauces built on a butter-and-flour base and finished with cream are the backbone of American cookbooks around 1900, when French technique had been thoroughly absorbed into English-language household writing — this is essentially a béchamel with tomato standing in for part of the liquid, the shape of what French kitchens called sauce aurore. It belongs to the company it keeps: croquettes, cutlets, sweetbreads and lobster were the made dishes of the period, built from cooked and chopped meat and needing a sauce to bind or blanket them, and a book of this vintage often prints two or three variants of the same sauce so the cook can choose by what is in the larder. The pinch of soda may be the tell that this is a working kitchen's recipe rather than a chef's: it is a practical fix for curdling, common in nineteenth-century domestic manuals and said to have been quietly dropped from later professional teaching, which is generally held to prefer controlling acid and heat instead.