Lucille Watson
SAUCE FOR SPAGHETTI
Fry two good-sized onions in two tablespoonfuls of butter and, when brown, pour in a can of tomatoes, liquor and all.
Let this simmer an hour and a half. Pass through a sieve.
Boil the spaghetti until tender and drain, then cover with the sauce.
Grate parmesan cheese fine over the top, being careful not to use too near the rind. Lucila Watson
A plain tomato sauce of the sort that appeared in American cookbooks once canned tomatoes became reliable. Two things need attention: the seasoning the recipe never mentions, and the long unhurried simmer, which is the whole point of it.
- The can of tomatoesPeriod cans ran from about a pound to two pounds (the No. 2 and No. 3 sizes); a modern 28 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes is a reasonable stand-in and should give roughly two cups of finished sauce. "Liquor and all" means the packing juice goes in too.
- Brown the onions properlyThe colour on the onions is the only depth the sauce has — there is no garlic, no herb, no meat. Take them well past soft, 15 to 20 minutes over medium heat, to a real nut brown without scorching the butter.
- The ninety-minute simmerNot padding. It reduces the canned tomato, breaks the onion down and drives off the tinny note. Keep it at a bare blip with the pan partly covered, and stir now and then so the bottom does not catch.
- Passing through a sieveA fine sieve and the back of a ladle gives the smooth, almost creamy texture intended here. A food mill is faster; a blender will work but aerates the sauce and lightens the colour.
- SaltThe original names none; informal contributed recipes of this kind often left seasoning unstated. Salt the onions as they cook and correct at the end, and salt the pasta water well.
- "Until tender"Pre-1920 American practice often meant spaghetti boiled fifteen or twenty minutes to a complete softness. Modern dried pasta wants 8 to 11 minutes; check the box and taste.
- The rind warningParmesan close to the rind is drier, saltier and grates into hard grit rather than fine flakes. Stop an inch short of it. Use a wedge of real Parmigiano-Reggiano or grana; pre-grated tubs will not melt into the sauce.
- YieldEnough for about 12 oz of dried spaghetti, serving three or four. The sauce is thin by modern habit — it coats rather than clings, and it is meant to.
This comes from a collection of recipes contributed by stage and screen performers, a fundraising genre that flourished from the 1890s through the interwar years: a name recognisable from the playbill, a dish short enough to fit a single paragraph. Lucile Watson, Canadian-born and long established on Broadway before Hollywood cast her as the well-bred matriarch, gives the kind of sauce a household could actually manage — canned tomatoes, an onion, butter rather than olive oil, and grated Parmesan as the sole flourish. The instruction to sieve the sauce belongs to a lineage of refinement, and the closing warning about the cheese rind suggests someone who had eaten enough gritty Parmesan to mind.