Fresh Tomato Gravy Sauce

Fresh Tomato Gravy Sauce is a traditional Anglo-Indian recipe from the 1860s for a classic gravy-style sauce made from boiled tomatoes thickened with cornflour (cornstarch) and flavoured with Tapp's sauce. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Anglo-Indian version of: Fresh Tomato Gravy Sauce.

prep time

15 minutes

cook time

30 minutes

Total Time:

45 minutes

Additional Time:

(+cooling)

Serves:

4—6

Rating:

Tags : Sauce Recipes Herb Recipes Fusion Recipes British Recipes

This is a traditional Anglo-Indian recipe redacted from the volume THE INDIAN COOKERY BOOK: A Practical Handbook to The Kitchen in India (author unknown), published by: WYMAN & CO., HARE STREET CALCUTTA circa 1869.
.

Original Recipe

300.—Fresh Tomato Gravy Sauce for Made Dishes

Take forty tomatoes (halved), some soup herbs, and salt; boil them in a little stock; strain through a
sieve, replace on the fire, and thicken with the addition, more or less, of a dessertspoonful of
arrowroot or corn or other flour, to obtain any required consistency; finally add a tspful of
good English vinegar; if a sharper gravy sauce be required, instead of the vinegar add either a
dessertspoonful of tapp sauce or a tspful of chili vinegar.

Modern Redaction

This is probably the closest that Victorian Anglo-Indian recipes came to a base curry gravy. In essence, this is a tomato puree, thickened with cornflour or arrowroot and flavoured with spicy Tapp's sauce. So it has a bit of a background chilli kick.

Ingredients:

12 tomatoes, halved
1 tbsp chives, chopped
1 tbsp parsley, chopped
1 tbsp tarragon, chopped
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cornflour (cornstarch), blended to a slurry with 2 tbsp water
60ml (1/4 cup) meat or vegetable stock
2 tbsp Tapp's sauce

Method:

Combine the tomato pieces in a pan with the vegetable stock, herbs and salt. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes, until the tomatoes are puply.

Pass the resultant mixture through a fine-meshed sieve, then return the liquid to the pan. Bring back to a simmer, add the cornflour slurry and cook until thickened to your liking.

Take off the heat, stir in the Tapp's sauce and serve. This can be used as a tomato base for a curry or as a spicy tomato gravy-style sauce.

Find more Victorian Recipes Here and more Curry Recipes Here. For the original version of The Indian Cookery book see my The Indian Cookery Book main page.