Actually very easy

Tomato sauce

The beliefGood tomato sauce is assumed to need hours of cooking.

The truthFresh tomato sauce is ready in 25 minutes. Long cooking adds sweetness but takes away the tomato’s fresh acidity and smell; they are two different sauces.

40 minutes

How to make it

What you need

1 kg ripe tomatoes (or 800 g tinned tomatoes)
3 tablespoons of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon of salt
A few basil leaves, optional

How the engine read this list (5 lines)

1000 g	Ripe tomatoes	tomato
41 g	Olive oil	olive-oil
10 g	Garlic	garlic
6 g	Salt	salt
—	Basil optional	basil

An empty weight means that line could not be turned into grams — either the amount is open ("to taste") or the ingredient has no record here. Neither enters the sum as zero; they do not enter it at all.

Score a cross in the bottom of each tomato, drop them into boiling water for 30 seconds, then into cold water, and peel them. Chop them roughly and keep the seeds.
Warm the olive oil in a wide pan over a medium flame and turn the sliced garlic in it for a minute without letting it colour.
Add the tomatoes and salt and cook uncovered for 20–25 minutes, stirring now and then.
It is ready when a line drawn with a spoon stays open for a few seconds. Add the basil once it is off the heat.
If you are not using it straight away, divide it into small containers and get it into the fridge or freezer within two hours.

Why it works

The taste of tomato comes mostly from three things: sugar, acid and glutamate. The glutamate is concentrated in the jelly around the seeds, which is why throwing the seeds away makes a flatter sauce. A short cook keeps most of the volatile compounds that give tomato its fresh smell; in 20–25 minutes enough water leaves for the sauce to hold on a spoon. On a long cook those aromas go with the steam and Maillard and caramelised flavours replace them. Olive oil is not only there for taste: lycopene, the red of the tomato, dissolves in fat and is freed from the cell walls by heat. Garlic turns bitter once it browns in hot oil, so it gets a minute at most before the tomato goes in. On the safety side, tomato usually sits at pH 4.2–4.9, so some varieties are above the low-acid line. By the US Food and Drug Administration’s definition, such a product is safe in a closed container only if acid brings it to pH 4.6 or below. A sauce kept in the fridge at home sits outside that rule.

The rough sum

1057 grams going in

557 kcal in total

100% of the mass has figures behind it. This is the sum of what GOES IN rather than of what comes out. Wherever something evaporates, drains or ferments the two differ: a kilo of milk is 150 g of cheese.

Diets it qualifies for

Gluten-free Vegan Vegetarian Lactose-free

Storage & shelf life

How long it keeps

Fridge, in a closed box: 48 hours
Freezer, in portions: 6 months
In a jar at room temperature: Not advised: it is not canned without added acid

Depending on variety and ripeness, tomato can fall on either side of the pH 4.6 line, which is why tomato is not a product to keep in a jar on the shelf without added acid. This sauce is a fridge and freezer product. The UK Food Standards Agency advises eating cooked food within 48 hours or freezing it.

When to bin it Mould on the surface, foam or a sour, yeasty smell: throw it out.

History

Where it comes from

Tomatoes came to Europe from the Americas in the sixteenth century and stayed largely ornamental for two hundred years. The first known printed recipe for tomato sauce is Antonio Latini’s “tomato sauce in the Spanish style”, Naples, 1692. Tomatoes entered the Ottoman kitchen in the nineteenth century and soon became the base of paste, sauces and stews; today a Turkish pot dish without tomato is hard to imagine.

The knack

In winter, tinned tomatoes make better sauce than fresh ones picked unripe.
If it is too sharp, try a teaspoon of butter rather than a pinch of sugar: the fat softens the edge of the acid.

Pastes and sauces

The others that work the same way

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Mayonnaise

The truthOne yolk binds 200 ml of oil. The only reason it splits is adding the oil too fast.

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About as long

In the time this takes, so would these

Strawberry jam Çökelek Invert sugar syrup Pasta Ghee Breadcrumbs

The sources on this page

U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Acidified & Low-Acid Canned Foods Guidance Documents & Regulatory Information
Food Standards Agency, How to chill, freeze and defrost food safely

What to cook

Recipes

How it works