Tomato pulp

“ He is therefore entitled to a substantial share of the credit for the material in this bulletin.
SANITARY CONTROL OF TOMATO PULP FACTORIES
The manufacture of tomato pulp requires careful supervision from beginning to end. The raw product must be carefully selected, and all possible steps should be taken to induce growers to discard rotting [7] tomatoes in the field and to expedite the movement of the raw product from field to factory. Tomatoes must be carefully washed and sorted. ”

“ As a rule they are run over a grader and only the large ones are used for peeling, the small ones being pulped or made into catsup. It does not pay to peel the small tomatoes, as it requires too much labor, and the women who do the peeling at so much per bucket try to fight shy of them, and often mash them up in their buckets to avoid having to peel them. They will make just as good pulp or catsup as the large tomatoes will, and much more can be got out of them in this way than if an attempt is made to get them peeled. ”

“ So many cases have come to our attention, however, in which canners have not succeeded in maintaining the degree of sorting necessary with a product of this kind that we have grown to feel that the presence of an analyst working continuously in a plant is an additional safeguard.
The conditions attending the canning of tomatoes are widely different from those attending the manufacture of tomato pulp. ”

“ It has been repeatedly demonstrated, however, that a carefully selected man or woman with common school education can learn the method and use it with sufficient accuracy for factory control. The person selected for this work should have good powers of observation and a positive character.
This laboratory has heretofore advised that manufacturers of tomato pulp should not give too much attention to the microscopic count of their product. ”

“ Many manufacturers of tomato pulp control the concentration of their product by determining specific gravity when the evaporation is almost completed. They therefore desire the results at the earliest possible moment, and there is no attempt to cool the sample before determining specific gravity, although in that way much more accurate results could be obtained. ”

“ Boil a dozen or a can of tomatoes until they are very thoroughly cooked, and press them through a sieve. To a quart{97} of tomato pulp add a tea-spoonful of soda. Put into a saucepan butter the size of a pigeon’s egg, and when it bubbles sprinkle and stir in a heaping tea-spoonful of flour. When it is cooked, stir into this a pint of hot milk, a little Cayenne pepper, salt, and a handful of cracker crumbs. When it boils, add the tomato pulp. Heat it well without boiling, and serve immediately. ”

“ Wash the tomatoes thoroughly and cut a slice one inch in diameter from the blossom end, reserving it for future use. Carefully scoop out the pulp, being careful to leave the shell firm. To the tomato pulp, add bread crumbs, left-over vegetables, chopped meat, egg, melted butter, salt and paprika. Cook the mixture four minutes over the fire. Fill the shells with the cooked mixture. Put the slices back on the tomatoes. Place in a small pan and bake twenty minutes in a hot oven. ”

“ Ingredients.—1⁄2 a pint of tomato pulp, 2 or 3 tablespoonfuls of breadcrumbs, 1⁄2 an oz of butter, 1⁄2 a teaspoonful of finely-chopped onion, salt and pepper, sugar, nutmeg, browned breadcrumbs, butter.
Method.—Obtain the pulp by passing tomatoes through a fine sieve, or use preserved pulp. Heat the butter in a stewpan, fry the onion until lightly-browned, and add half the tomato pulp and white breadcrumbs gradually until the mixture has the consistency of very thick cream. ”

“ When the tomato is converted into pulp, every particle is exposed to the air for a very short time—long enough to make some slight change. The change is most marked in pulp from raw stock and least in that which has been well heated. It naturally follows that ketchup made promptly from whole stock will have the best color, that from canned tomatoes next, then canned pulp, and lastly, that from trimming stock. Pulp allowed to stand hot for too long a time will have a brownish color like stack burning. ”

“ There are many different species or varieties of mold plants which thrive on tomatoes and tomato pulp, but they are all very similar; they reproduce themselves in exactly the same way, and they are all arrested in their growth by extremes of temperature, and are killed by continued boiling. It should not be thought, however, that boiling for a very few minutes will kill all mold spores, as they have a tough surface which has considerable resistance to heat. ”

“ Cut a slit down the side of every tomato. Put them into a large preserving kettle without any water. Their own juice is sufficient. On no account boil tomatos in brass or copper, their acid acting on those metals produces verdigris, and renders them poisonous. Boil them till they are quite soft, and easily mashed, stirring them up frequently from the bottom. Press and mash them through a hair sieve, till all the pulp has run out into the pan below, leaving in the sieve only the skins and seeds. Season the liquid with a little salt, some cayenne, and plenty of powdered nutmeg and mace. ”

“ If the tomatoes are firm and largely free from cracks around the stem end it is not so bad, but when they come in badly cracked, with tufts of mold growing in all the cracks, as is often the case late in the season, the amount of labor required to properly sort them makes the working up of trimmings unprofitable.
When the trimmings show up fairly well, and the labor to handle them is available, there is no reason why the chili sauce packer or tomato canner should not utilize what would otherwise be a waste by turning it into pulp or “trimming catsup.” ”

“ It is reheated, which is hard on the color, as heat applied to cold pulp for five minutes to bring it to a boil seems to hurt the color as much as a half hour added on to the cook after the pulp is hot. After reheating, it is cooked into catsup, which requires about thirty minutes, and after being bottled it is sterilized at a high temperature for about an hour, which makes the fourth cooking those tomatoes get. This is what is meant by too much cooking in the aggregate. Too long a cook at one time will, of course, also darken the product. ”

“ TOMATO PUDDING Scald, peel, and slice eight tomatoes. Squeeze out three-quarters of their juice into a bowl through cheese-cloth, and put it to one side; then chop up the pulp of the tomatoes with two tablespoons of bread crumbs, a little salt, sugar, and pepper, and a tablespoon of melted butter. Pour them in a buttered mold, place the mold in a double boiler, and put on the cover, and boil hard for one hour. Then turn out on a dish. Meanwhile take the juice of the tomatoes, season with sugar, salt, and pepper, mix in one tablespoon of butter rolled in flour. ”

“ At sea level, under atmospheric pressure, it boils at 212 degrees F. By employing a low temperature, and condensing rapidly, which can be done in the vacuum pan, the natural bright red color of the tomatoes is affected very little by the cooking. High temperatures and continued boiling are the agents which destroy tomato color as well as flavor. The vacuum pan produces a pulp of not only fine color, but of very fine flavor. ”

“ Some packers throw away the peelings, either because they are so busy with the whole tomatoes that they can’t bother with them, or because they are afraid the pulp which they are worked up into will run high in micro-organisms, and they don’t want to have such pulp on their hands. ”

“ Unless the plant consists of several floors and the tomatoes start at the top and come out as finished pulp at the bottom, or the plant is built on a terraced plan, as one plant is in Indiana, which is built on the side of a hill, it is necessary to do a certain amount of pumping. An ordinary pump will not do, as there would be contamination by iron, and considerable rusting, while the pump was idle, of those parts of the pump with which tomato juice comes in contact, this rust to be carried along with the tomato juice the first time the pump is used again. ”

“ A fairly acid tomato imparts more flavor and needs less vinegar in the finished product. The fleshy portion of the tomato gives the body, but the pulp about the seeds furnishes the characteristic flavor.
The collecting of tomatoes in the field should be done at short intervals so that the fruit may be taken when in prime condition. Where picking is done at too wide intervals, there is a tendency to take fruit that is only colored and not really ripe, and for some to be left and become over-ripe. ”

“ Be careful not to cut into the fleshy portion or seed cells, for this will scatter the seeds and pulp through the liquid, injuring the appearance of the product. Cut out the core before removing the skin, for the skin will protect the pulp and there will be less danger of breaking the tomato. ”

“ The fruit of this plant is fleshy, usually red or yellow, divided into two, three or more cells containing numerous seeds imbedded in pulp. The tomato is one of a genus of several species, all natives of South America, chiefly on the Peruvian side. In the warmer countries of the United States, Europe and other countries in which the summer is warm and prolonged, it has long been cultivated for the excellent qualities of the fruit as an article of diet. The tomato is extensively grown as a field crop for canneries in the United States, and in the North is one of the chief winter-forcing crops. ”

“ Those who eat it do not invariably succumb to cancer; and the dyspeptic should always keep it on the premises. As the tomato is also known as the “love-apple,” a great point was missed by our old friend Sergeant Buzfuz, in the celebrated Bardell v. Pickwick trial, when referring to the postscript, “chops, and tomato sauce.” Possibly Charles Dickens was not an authority on veget—— I beg pardon, “hextras.”
Here is a French recipe for
Tomate au Gratin:
Cut open the tops and scoop out the pulp. ”

“ Crushing Crushing the tomatoes without cycloning them is a very good method where the tomatoes are going to be made into pulp or puree, as the finishing machine will convert the crushed cooked tomatoes into a very smooth product. Where catsup is to be made direct from the tomatoes, however, cycloning is to be preferred to crushing. ”

“ Those varieties having a purplish cast should be avoided, as they cook up into a product having a brownish color. The smooth, round varieties, such as the Stone, are especially good for peeling, while the flat varieties, and those having a very coarse, uneven surface, are well suited for pulp or catsup.
Storing Tomatoes For storing the tomatoes at the factory until they can be put over the sorting belts the open-air storage is used almost universally, and it seems to be the only method which can be economically employed at a plant which handles large quantities of tomatoes. ”

“ This may be true of itself, but the fruit-like acid tomato flavor which most people value is found chiefly in the pulp, and the fruit which has not a due proportion of pulp and flesh seems to be insipid and tasteless. Again, the division into many small cells is often connected with a large and pithy placenta and unevenness in maturity and coloring, which faults often more than overbalance any advantage from small cells and thick flesh. ”

“ The quality of the tomato stock is the real important thing. Fresh tomatoes may be used or a fine grade of pulp may be used, and either will make an excellent soup. With poor tomato stock a good soup cannot be made no matter what you do to it. Spicing artistically, and making rich by the use of plenty of good butter, will not make amends for poor quality of tomato stock. ”

“ Some manufacturers of tomato products use the Howard method as a check on their factory control. For this purpose it is not satisfactory to have samples examined in a laboratory located at a distance from the factory. Even if several samples are examined from a day’s run, they probably do not represent all the pulp manufactured on that day. It sometimes happens that one wagonload of tomatoes is almost entirely free of rotting material, whereas the succeeding load contains a considerable amount. ”

“ If the final product is to be soup, cycloning is necessary. This will be discussed further in the chapters on catsup and soup.
When a crusher is used it takes the place of the cyclone or pulp machine, although it performs an entirely different kind of an operation, and the tomatoes go through exactly the same 23process as in cold pulping, except that instead of removing the seeds and skins from the tomatoes before cooking, the tomatoes are chopped very fine and conveyed to the cooking kettles—seeds, skin and all. ”

“ Repeat the centrifuging and the filtration of the supernatant liquor once more, and then finally transfer the insoluble solids to the filter paper and thoroughly wash with hot water. Dry the paper and insoluble solids, and weigh. The insoluble solids are quite hydroscopic and the weight must be taken quickly.
Determination of Sugar
The sugar of tomatoes is probably always present as invert sugar. If cane sugar is ever present in the raw product it is doubtless inverted during the concentration of pulp. ”

“ Fill the skins with this mixture, sprinkle with crumbs and oiled butter, and bake in a moderate oven until browned.
Tomatoes au Gratin (Hot)
Take four tomatoes as nearly the same size as possible, and a slice off the top of each. Scoop [33] out the middle of the tomato as much as possible, leaving the frames for cases. These set on one side. Work the pulp through a sieve, and mix into it a heaped-up tablespoonful of finely-grated breadcrumbs, add the yolks of 2 eggs, and mix well. ”