Tomato Soup

Fresh tomatoes cooked with onion, cloves and stock, passed through a food mill, and thickened with a browned roux. No country is claimed; this is the classic European cream-of-tomato construction. The roux is what distinguishes it from most modern tomato soups, which are simply blended and finished with cream. Cooking butter and flour together until the mixture turns a medium brown, then whisking the tomato mixture into it gradually, gives body and a faint toasted depth that blending alone does not produce. It is an older technique and it is worth knowing. Two details are easy to overlook and both matter. The whole cloves, four of them, in a soup this size, are a distinctly old-fashioned touch that gives the soup a warm, faintly medicinal background note; they are removed with everything else by the food mill. And the two teaspoons of sugar are not there to sweeten but to counteract the acidity of the tomatoes, which is why the source says to taste and adjust. Passing the soup through a food mill rather than a blender leaves skins and seeds behind and gives a smoother, cleaner result. A sieve does the same job with more effort. Africa has its own tomato-based dishes in quantity, obe ata, shakshuka, matbucha, but they are stews and salads rather than soups, and they are separate pages here.