Tomato soup

“ Tomato Soup. Time—11⁄2 hour. 2 quarts stock, 2 lbs. tomatoes or 1 tin tomatoes, 2 leeks, 2 carrots, 2 turnips; pepper and salt to taste; thyme, and half a bay-leaf, 1 teaspoonful chopped parsley, 1 oz. dripping, 2 tablespoonfuls flour.
Prepare and cut up the vegetables, boil all for half an hour in 1⁄2 pint water, and then pulp through a sieve. Warm the dripping in a stew-pan, stir the flour in smoothly, pour the pulped vegetables and stock on to it slowly, and let all thicken over the fire. ”

“ I have a fondness for tomato soup and steak without grizzles. Since almost any one can broil a steak I’ll pass that up and tell you how to play cream of tomato right around the kitchen course in par.
You can take ripe tomatoes, cut them up, stew them and put them through a strainer. You can add a bit of soup stock and seasoning and all that, but the easy way is to take some of Mr. Campbell’s tomato soup and add milk instead of water—only use more soup, per person, than the can label calls for. ”

“ Canned tomato soup may be used instead of canned tomatoes. If this substitution is made, the cloves, allspice berries, peppercorns, and parsley should be omitted. For economy, the egg may be omitted. If no egg is used, the flour may be increased to 4 tablespoonfuls and the fat to 3 tablespoonfuls. ”

“ One of the best cooks was in the habit of saving everything, and announced one day, when her soup was especially praised, that it contained the crumbs of gingerbread from her cake box!
Creamed onions left from a dinner, or a little stewed corn or tomatoes, potatoes fried or mashed, a few baked beans—even a small dish of apple sauce—have often added to the flavor of soup. Of course, all good meat gravies, or bones from roast or fried meats, can be added to the contents of your stock kettle. A little butter is always needed in tomato soup. ”

“ Bring to the boil, stirring constantly, and serve at once. An onion cooked with the tomatoes is a pleasant addition to the soup.
TOMATO SOUP—IV
Boil a quart can of tomatoes with two cupfuls of cold water. Blend together one tablespoonful of butter and two of flour, mix with half a cupful of cold water, add to the soup, and stir constantly until it thickens. Add a grated onion, season with salt and pepper, simmer slowly for twenty minutes. Strain through a sieve, re-heat, add a teaspoonful of baking soda and two cupfuls of milk. Boil one minute and serve. ”

“ DRY TOMATO SOUP. Brown a couple of onions in a little oil, about two table-spoonsful or more, according to the number of tomatos; when hot, add about six tomatos cut and peeled, season with cayenne pepper and salt, and let the whole simmer for a short time, then cut thin slices of bread, and put as much with the tomatos as will bring them to the consistency of a pudding; it must be well beaten up, stir in the yolks of two or three eggs, and two ounces of butter warmed; turn the whole into a deep dish and bake it very brown. ”

“ I will make tomato soup since it is so cold and blustering, and perhaps, if you are all very, very good, a spicy, plummy steamed pudding, if we can coax Margery to give us one of her foamy sauces! I think we can defy the weather, even the wind and the weather. ”

“ An ordinary bread pudding becomes veritably a queen of 14puddings as, indeed, it is called, merely by having a layer of jam through its center and a simple icing spread over the top. Ordinary pea soup exhibits chameleon-like possibilities merely through the addition of a little celery-root, a dash of curry or the admixture of a few spoonfuls of minced spinach, and tomato soup has for most an appeal that even this favorite of soups never had before when just the right amount of thyme is added while it simmers, along with, perhaps a bayleaf. ”

“ Cool and skim off fat; add half a salt spoon of pepper, 2 teaspoonfuls of salt, 3 potatoes, pared and cut up, 1/2 a carrot, 1/2 an onion, 3 gumbo pods, half a bay leaf and a little chopped parsley. Add a few drops of caramel and serve hot. Strain, if preferred thin.
Tomato Soup without Stock.
1 dozen tomatoes cut up and enough water to cover them; a salt spoon of mustard, salt and 2 dozen cloves. Stew thoroughly and strain. Rub together 2 heaping tablespoons of flour and a piece of butter the size of an egg. Put this in the strained liquor and boil. This makes soup for six persons. ”

“ The fat is of no use for soup, as it must be skimmed off when boiling. Cut the meat in pieces, season them with a little salt and pepper, and put them into a pot with three quarts of water. The tomatos will supply abundance of liquid. Of these you should have a large quarter of a peck. They should be full-grown, and quite ripe. Cut each tomato into four pieces, and put them into the soup; after it has come to a boil and been skimmed. It will be greatly improved by adding a quarter of a peck of ochras cut into thin round slices. ”

“ Then bake the cups of custard in a pan of water. Use the custard in the cups either hot or cold. If the custard is to be used cold leave it in the mould; it will stand better than if it is turned out hot. But it is stiff enough to retain its form even when it is hot. And the sugar that is in the mould forms a little sauce around it on the dish.
TOMATO SOUP.
Next take a recipe for tomato soup. A can of tomatoes; put them over the fire. In the summer use about two quarts of fresh tomatoes. You will find that about two quarts will be sufficient. ”

“ Cover with a little more than a quart of cold water. Bring to a boil, and then simmer gently for three hours. Strain off the liquid. Pass the vegetables through a sieve. Add to the liquid. Set on the fire again. Season. Add half a pint of green peas which have already been boiled.
Tomato Soup 1 tin of tomatoes
1 pint boiling water
1 table-spoon sugar
4 cloves
2 pepper-corns
1 table-spoon butter
1 ” flour
1 ” chopped onion
1 ” ” parsley
Put the tomatoes, water, sugar, cloves and pepper-corns in a porcelain-lined sauce-pot. ”

“ Cream of Tomato Soup Scald milk with onion, remove onion, and thicken milk with flour diluted with cold water until thin enough to pour, being careful that the mixture is free from lumps; cook twenty minutes, stirring constantly at first. Cook tomatoes with sugar fifteen minutes, add soda, and rub through a sieve; combine mixtures, and strain into tureen over butter, salt, and pepper. ”

“ Proper Sweetness Getting proper sweetness is not nearly so easy as one might suppose. It is not so difficult when the soup is made from fresh tomatoes, although even then every batch must be tasted after all but a few pounds of the sugar is added, and the amount of sugar varied according to the sweetness of the tomatoes. When the weather is moderately dry, with plenty of sunshine, the tomatoes are usually sweet and do not require so much sugar, but tomatoes which ripen during rainy, dark, cold days are not so sweet, and a little more sugar is needed. ”

“ The fact that soup contains flour and butter makes the counting of yeasts, spores, and bacteria under the microscope a difficult operation. The molds, however, show up almost as well in soup as they do in pulp.
Beginning the Cook and Adding Soda The tomatoes must be cycloned before they are converted into soup. Crushed tomatoes will not do. The cycloned juice for each batch is measured in the same manner as for catsup, 117and any of the types of cooking kettles that are used for catsup are satisfactory for soup. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By mixing corn and tomatoes together no difficulty will be found. Gumbo and tomato mixed are valuable for soup. Canned tomatoes are invaluable in a household. They are very easily managed, and are as desirable for soups and sauces as for a separate vegetable dish. If fruits or vegetables of any kind are quite fresh, and there is not too large a quantity scalded at one time to prevent careful management of each can, not one can in a hundred will be lost. ”

“ Rub the soup through a strainer, add the seasonings, bind it, [73] and when it has boiled for five minutes pour it over the sliced eggs and lemon in a soup tureen.
Serves eight or ten persons.
Tomato Soup 1 can tomatoes, or 1 qt. raw tomatoes 1 pt. ”

“ Tomato Cream Soup.—Put six ripe tomatoes on to stew; when done, boil one pint of milk in a double boiler, mix two tea-spoonfuls (large) of flour with very little milk till smooth, then stir it into the boiling milk; cook ten minutes. To the tomato put a salt-spoonful, scant, of soda, stir well, then rub through a strainer fine enough to keep back seeds; add a dessert-spoonful of butter to the milk, stirring well, then the tomato, and serve immediately. ”

“ The factory manager should make it a point to sample the soup several times a day, and also to have others sample it. It is better to have it just a little less sweet than it should be than to have it too sweet. The consumer can always add a little sugar but cannot take any out.
The third point mentioned above—that of uniform consistency and smoothness, will be discussed fully under the cooking and shaking processes.
115 Proper Acidity I stated as the fourth point that the soup should not curdle fresh milk, even though no soda is added by the housewife. ”

“ Canned tomatoes are always sterilized and can be kept in storage for years without losing their sweetness. Pulp packed in 5–gallon cans is not sterilized and quite a after-sterilization percentage of it will lose much of its sweetness on being stored for six months, and after being stored a year still more is lost. It takes hundreds of pounds of expensive sugar to make up for this loss of sweetness when the pulp is made into soup.
Sampling Of course, a cook is not infallible in his judgment as to just what is the right sweetness and he needs the co-operation of others at the factory. ”

“ Boil the rice till tender in 2-1/2 pints of water, with the butter and seasoning. When quite soft, add the tomato juice and the cheese; stir until the soup boils and the cheese is dissolved, and serve. If too much of the water has boiled away, add a little more.
HOT-POT.
2 lbs. of potatoes, 3/4 lb. of onions, 1 breakfastcupful of tinned tomatoes or 1/2 lb. of sliced fresh ones, 1 teaspoonful of mixed herbs, 1-1/2 oz. butter, pepper and salt to taste. Those who do not like tomatoes can leave them out, and the dish will still be very savoury. ”

“ If it is still fat skim often while simmering.
SOME CHEAP SOUPS
Tomato.—Turn a can of tomatoes into a stew-pan, and let come to a boil; fry some bread in dice, place them at the bot [256] tom of a soup tureen, and rub the tomatoes through a colander over them; put the pulp left in the colander back into the stewpan; add water, let it boil up, and strain again into the tureen; stir in a teaspoonful of butter, season with pepper and salt, and serve. ”

“ The mark for quality should be set at the highest point possible and the price to correspond. The canner may book a lot of new business with a low price and mediocre quality but he is not likely to hold it. Almost anyone would rather pay a cent a can more and get better quality.
Microscopical Counts The first operations in soup making are the same as in pulp. The same care must be taken in sorting and washing the tomatoes, and the government authorities put soup on the same basis as other tomato products when it comes to microscopical analysis. ”

“ Having nearly filled the stew-pan with the tomatos, (cut up, if they are large) add a little salt and pepper, a piece of fresh butter dredged with flour, and (if approved) a very little chopped onion. If you have ready-boiled onions at hand, take one or two of them and mince it fine. Add to the tomatos some powdered white sugar to lessen the excessive acid. Put but very few bread-crumbs—if too many, they will weaken the taste. Tomatos are an improvement to every kind of plain soups, and may be added, with advantage, after the soup is in the tureen. ”

“ Take eight medium-sized, firm tomatoes, cut a hole on top of each, and scoop out the inside of the tomato, chop an onion, put it in a saucepan on the fire, with an ounce of butter, to simmer gently. When slightly colored, add six ounces of bread-crumbs, which you have soaked in water, and then pressed out nearly all the moisture, a dozen chopped mushrooms, a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, a pinch of salt, pepper, and thyme chopped fine, a little red pepper, and four tablespoonfuls of tomato sauce (Art. 90) ; mix all well together, and then fill the inside of your tomatoes. ”

“ Tomato sauce may be made by putting ripe [Pg 114] tomatoes into an earthen jar, and setting it in an oven from which the bread has been just drawn. When the tomatoes have become soft, the skins should be taken out, and the pulp should be mixed with vinegar, a few cloves of garlic pounded, Cayenne pepper, powdered ginger, and salt, to the taste. Another way is to stew a gallon of ripe tomatoes with a pound of salt till they are reduced to a pulp; then rub them through a sieve, and add half a drachm of cochineal, and Cayenne pepper, mace, allspice, and ginger to the taste. ”