Tomato Toast
Rub one pint of stewed tomatoes through a colander; season well with pepper, salt and butter and heat to boiling; toast thin slices of bread, butter them and lay in hot dish. Just before serving, add one cupful of hot milk, thickened with one teaspoonful arrow root, to the tomatoes, and pour over the toast.
A creamed tomato sauce over buttered toast, from the era when "toast" dishes were a standard supper. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes.
- The hinge: assemble at the last secondAcidic tomato and hot milk will curdle if they sit together over heat. Add the thickened milk to the tomatoes off the burner, stir once, and pour immediately over the toast.
- A pint of stewed tomatoesTwo cups. A 14-15 oz can of whole or diced tomatoes, pushed through a sieve, comes close enough, though you may need part of a second can to make up the volume. The colander step appears to be there to remove skins and seeds, so a fine sieve or a food mill does it better.
- ArrowrootStill sold, usually as arrowroot starch or flour. One teaspoon in a cup of milk gives a thin, glossy sauce rather than a bechamel. Slake it in a spoonful of cold milk first or it will lump, and do not boil it hard once thickened -- arrowroot thins again with prolonged heat.
- Seasoning "well"Start with 1/2 teaspoon salt, a good grind of pepper and a tablespoon of butter for the two cups of tomato, then taste. Canned tomatoes vary enough in salt and acidity that a pinch of sugar is sometimes wanted.
- The toastThin slices, toasted dry and buttered while hot, in a warmed dish. Thick or soft bread collapses into the sauce; a firm white or sourdough holds up long enough to reach the table.
- YieldEnough for four slices of toast, or two people as a light supper or lunch. It does not keep or reheat -- the sauce separates.
Milk toast, cream toast, tomato toast and their many cousins were the workhorses of the late nineteenth-century American supper table: cheap, quick, made from pantry staples, and gentle enough to be prescribed for invalids and children. The tomato version depended on canned or "stewed" tomatoes being reliably available year-round, something that only became true in most American households after the canning industry expanded in the decades following the Civil War. Arrowroot, imported chiefly from the West Indies, was favored over flour in this period for exactly the reason a modern cook would choose it -- it thickens clear and light and was thought easier to digest, which is why it turns up so often in cookbooks' invalid-cookery sections. The result is essentially a soup poured over bread, and it is worth remembering that at the time that was not a compromise but a recognized category of dish.