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Tomato Sauce
(Salsa di Pomidoro) Chop together, fine, one quarter of an onion, a clove of garlic, a piece of celery as long as your finger, a few bay leaves and just enough parsley.
Season with a little oil, salt and pepper, cut up seven or eight tomatoes and put everything over the fire together. Stir it from time to time and when you see the juice condensing into a thin custard strain through a sieve, and it is ready for use.
When fresh tomatoes are not available the tomato paste may be used. This is a concentrated paste made from tomatoes and spices which is to be had, at all Italian grocers', now so numerous in all American cities. Thinned with water, it is a much used ingredient in Italian recipes. Catsup and concentrated tomato soup do not make satisfactory substitutes as they are too sweet in flavor. Of course canned tomatoes seasoned with salt and a bit of bay leaf, can always be used instead of fresh tomatoes. This sauce serves many purposes. It is good on boiled meat; excellent to dress macaroni, spaghetti or other pastes which have been seasoned with butter and cheese, or on boiled rice seasoned in the same way (see Risotto). Mushrooms are a fine addition to it.
When using concentrated paste the following recipes will be found to give good results:
Chop one onion, one carrot and a celery stalk: form a little bunch of parsley and other aromatic greens and put everything to brown in a saucepan together with a piece of butter. Add a reasonable portion of tomato paste while cooking, stir and keep on a low fire until the sauce assumes the necessary consistency. 13
A plain soffritto-based sugo of the sort that anchors half the book. The instructions assume you know what the pan should look like rather than how long to stand over it.
- The cue that matters"Juice condensing into a thin custard" is the doneness test: the watery tomato liquid has reduced until the sauce coats a spoon and no longer separates into a pool. On a low to medium flame that takes roughly 30 to 45 minutes with fresh tomatoes, uncovered, stirred every few minutes.
- Quantity and yieldThe recipe says only "seven or eight tomatoes." Taken as medium-sized fruit that is somewhere around 1 1/2 lb, which after reduction and straining will give roughly a cup to a cup and a half of sauce -- a dressing for pasta rather than a pool of it.
- Bay leavesWith modern bay, one leaf, two at most; more and the sauce turns medicinal. Remove them before straining.
- Season with a little oilThis means enough olive oil to sweat the chopped vegetables, two to three tablespoons for this volume. Butter appears only in the tomato-paste version below.
- StrainingPressing through a sieve is what makes this a sauce rather than a chunky ragu, and it removes skins and seeds without peeling the tomatoes first. A food mill does the same work faster. If you want a rustic texture, skip it and simply lift out the bay.
- Tomato pasteThe "concentrated paste made from tomatoes and spices" sold at Italian groceries at the time was not necessarily the plain tomato paste of a modern 6-oz can; the text itself says it carried spices. For the second method, 3 to 4 tablespoons of paste loosened with about a cup of water gives "the necessary consistency"; brown the vegetables first, then add it.
- Canned tomatoesThe author's substitution still holds. A 28-oz can of whole peeled tomatoes, crushed, replaces the fresh; drain off some of the packing liquid or expect a longer reduction.
- MushroomsIf adding them, sauté separately until their water has gone and stir them in after straining, or they will be lost in the sieve.
This is the workhorse sauce of the Italian-American kitchen at the moment it was becoming visible to English-speaking readers — note the author's confidence that Italian grocers are "now so numerous in all American cities," a remark that dates the book to the years of heaviest Italian immigration. The recipe's shape descends from Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina (1891), where tomato sauce likewise begins with a chopped onion, celery, garlic and parsley rather than with tomatoes alone. The warning against ketchup and canned tomato soup is the most revealing line on the page: American pantry tomatoes were already sweetened, and the author is drawing a line between a savory sugo and the sugar-forward condiment tradition her readers knew. The sauce is served over pasta already dressed with butter and cheese, rather than tossed in sauce alone.