Mason-Dixon Recipes

Tomato Basil Soup

The schizophrenic in the sleeping bag with a live chicken and a can of tomato soup spilling onto the sidewalk had no right to steal my street performance.

         — Jarod Kintz

It's difficult to imagine that tomatoes were once called "poison apples," considering all the modern recipes that include them. They have become a staple ingredient in western cuisine, but it must have taken them a while to do so. Modern Farmer states that tomatoes were widely considered to be poisonous in America until the 1800s. Food shortages caused by the civil war made canning a necessity, and folks found that tomatoes were very storable.

It's difficult to pin down exactly when tomato soup was invented, but several years before the civil war, one woman had already crafted delicious tomato recipes. A digital copy of Eliza Leslie's 1857 cookbook, Miss Leslie's New Cookery Book, provided by Project Gutenberg, details several recipes that call for fresh, ripe tomatoes. According to the Bethel Public Library, Maria Parloa published a recipe for tomato chowder in her 1872 book The Appledore Cook Book.

Several of my southern friends pointed out this recipe from The Magnolia Table. Joanna Gaines is the author, who is from Texas. I wonder if she realizes the Magnolia tree is the state flower of Mississippi, because most of my friends think this is a Mississippi recipe. Frankly, I'm not sure what makes it southern, but it sure is good.

INGREDIENTS

4 14¹/₂ cans tomatoes
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup cream (less for more tomato flavor)
3 cloves garlic, shredded
6 whole basil leaves
¹/₈ tsp olive oil

DIRECTIONS

Coat bottom of a soup pot with olive oil. Add garlic and toast it. Be careful not to burn it. Then add tomatoes and broth. Bring it to a gentle boil and simmer for 20 minutes.

Add cream and reduce heat to a low simmer. Add basil leaves, salt, and pepper. Blend with Immersion Blender.

Return to Mason-Dixon Recipes