Talk:Tomato sauce

I would like to see a source for "Mexican tomato sauces usually contain large portions of Corona Light or home brewed tequila. " This is the first place I have ever heard this. It is especially questionable since 1) Corona Light was invented for the American market 2) Tequila is not brewed. The result of brewing agave in pulque which is then distilled into tequila 3) I have never heard or seen "home brewing" of tequila in Mexico since it is a pretty labor intensive process.

As from Naples in Italy I can say this article is full of errors and refers wannabe "foreign" italian sauces like "Fra Diavolo" as italian, while in Italy this kind of recipe for sauce it is quite unknown.

The correct word for sauces and food containing seafood it is "Alla Pescatora" ("fisherman style"), while Marinara ("sailor style") stands quite normally only for "Pizza alla marinara" that indicates Pizza garnished with only liquid tomato sauce, olive oil, salt and some garlic.

Also there are absurdities like those stating that neapolitan sauces are full of garlic and spicy!!! Absolutely false. these garnishments are used in very few quantitites and only in some minor recipes. Certainly these recipes are spicy and full of taste, but are minor ones.

Also chili pepper is used in Calabria region cuisine, and not in neapolitan cuisine.

With respect. --Raffaele Megabyte 15:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

OK, what did Europeans use before tomatoes for a pasta sauce? Not even McGee says anything about that. Figs? There must have been some food niche that it filled in Italy, just as chillis did in South Asia (that is more obvious). So?

Probably olive oil and a number of vegetables or fish thrown into the sauce. Also, pesto is a very old sauce, which is also olive oil based. It is important to remember that tomatoes were embraced more in the south than in the north. In Venetian cuisine, for instance, you hardly find tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, or anything else identified as "foreign." The Venetians used a lot of black pepper, which was more expensive than gold at the time. Venice was the NYC of its day, making its money by monopolizing the Indian spice trade. This is why the Spanish contracted Columbus and so many other mariners: to find a way around the Venetian stranglehold and gain access to the wealth of the east.

Anyway, I digress. I have a cookbook by Valentina Harris called "Southern Italian Cooking." In there it says the earliest pasta recipes came from the Arabs (a hundred years before Marco Polo's run to China) who took ceci beans and made a loose felafel-like mixture, and fried it into crepes. The bean crepes were then sliced into strips and tossed with whatever the family had: leftover meat, wild greens, chestnuts which were very cheap back then, and herbs. Pasta was basically a way to stretch the meal, like bread.72.78.11.48 13:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Having edited the Marinara paragraph, I'm not really sure why it's not a article of its own. The first paragraph is pretty dubious too, but I don't have time to edit it now. It's all very well to put a disclaimer about the recipe at the bottom, but still... — Moilleadóir 12:02, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can anyone with knowledge of authentic Italian cooking comment on marinara? I heard somewhere that pasta alla marinara could have just about anything on it -- one description I read said something like "the cook put in everything but his horse". --FOo 23:40, 9 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

As a far as I ate it in Italy, Marinara is when "There is seafood in there", especially "mussels" or "Vongole" = "Clams". Spagetti alla marinara have a tomato sauce with mussels or clams in it. In French kitchen, Mussels & marinara (Moules marinières), are mussels with a cream and white wine with herbs based food.

Marinara does not have fish in it. This is a tourist invention based on the expectations of the tourists. "Marinara" refers to mariners, who needed a quick dish to make, as they were on the clock and fire is dangerous on any ship, especially the tiny fishing boats they used. It is a contrast to a ragu, which could cook for hours.72.78.181.23 (talk) 14:34, 8 June 2008 (UTC)Reply

I realize there's a disclaimer that 'this is just one of hundreds of recipes' but is it really that common for italian tomato sauces to start out with HAM ground up in it, then strained?? I mean, surely there's one archetypal manner of saucery, which belongs in that first paragraph, and SURELY said proto-sauce lacks hammage.. I always thought the mainstay of the sauce was roasted or oven-cooked stewed tomatoes blended with wine..

Marinara is a tomato sauce for pasta, pizza, or dipping which contains seafood in a tomato sauce. From the Italian 'alla marinara' or 'sailor style', marinara sauce usually includes tomatoes, onions and herbs and can include a variety of seafoods such as scallops, oysters, and anchovies.

Marinara has become a misnomer for any type of tomato sauce, which does not contain meat, particularly in the United States. In Italy, much of Europe, and many of the finer restaurants in the United States, marinara specifically indicates that the tomato sauce contains seafood. Tomato sauce without meat or seafood is referred to as "Napoletana" whereas tomato sauce with meat is referred to as "Bolognese".

• I don't think the preponderance of the evidence is on your side, based on a quick google search. There is indeed a number of seafood dishes known as "alla marinara", but I believe that on the whole it's a regional usage. There does seem to be an older salsa marinara that is based on wine and seafood, but I don't think it's all that common and doesn't have tomato in it. A couple of cites: a recipe in Italian Lidia Bastianich's recipe Now if a Lidia cite isn't authoritative, I don't know what is. Haikupoet 01:41, 23 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

"Marinara" does mean sailor style, but as Lydia's recipe points out, it has more to do with being a quick, thrown together sauce, rather than a well simmered one. To say it must have fish in it, I think misreads the title. After all, pasta puttanesca doesn't have prostitutes in it, right? Puttanesca refers to pasta made "whore style" (derived from the fact that a lot of prostitutes hate to kiss their johns, so they ate pungent, smelly things like garlic, anchovies, peperoncino, etc.). Most Italian food names indicate the process of how something is made: Mozzarella (mozzare - to pull into little balls), sopressata (pressed or compressed), tagliatelle (cut up or made into strips), etc. 72.78.11.48 13:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

This is a very confusing article. This is perhaps best illustrated by this para:

In the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and India the term "tomato sauce" normally refers to the condiment otherwise known as tomato ketchup, whereas in Canada and the US, "tomato sauce" replaces "marinara sauce" and never refers to ketchup. In these countries, other sauces made with tomatoes are more usually referred to as pasta sauce etc., depending on their uses. In Australia, the term marinara often refers to a tomato-based seafood dish such as spaghetti marinara or marinara pizza.

But the confusion seems to pervade the entire piece.

I agree that in Aust tomato sauce is close to the US ketchup. Then the next part of the sentence is really confusing and it just gets worse and worse. How does "tomato sauce" replace "marinara sauce" in Canada and the US? Confusing. I thought that it was only in the US that marinara refers to a tomato sauce containing no meat and no seafood (called Napolitana in Australia from my experience, as it is in Italy, while it is apparently called Neapolitan sauce in the US). Likewise Australia uses Marinara to refer generally to seafood being contained in the dish, which I thought many countries did with the exception of the US. Asa01 06:41, 4 December 2006 (UTC)Reply

OK I plan a major edit/delete of the confusing elements of this article. I have saved the most confusing section below. Asa01 08:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)Reply

Marinara sauce (from Italian alla marinara 'sailor style') is another term for a simple and generally quickly made tomato sauce for pasta made without meat and usually including tomatoes, onions and herbs. This usage of the term is confined to the United States, while in Italy it refers to seafood sauces for pasta, risotto, or pizza (with or without tomato sauce). Marinara sauce is spicy, often made with large amounts of garlic and chile pepper, but not to the degree of Fra Diavolo sauce. It can be used for any dish that requires tomato sauce, and is generally quicker to prepare than other tomato sauces. It is often used as a dipping sauce for foods such as calzone and fried mozzarella sticks.

Other common regional Italian tomato sauces include Amatriciana (diced tomatoes and pancetta), Arrabbiata (chile pepper), Vodka sauce (vodka and cream), Salsa Cruda (raw tomatoes), and Puttanesca (olives, garlic, anchovies). Most of these well-known sauces are typical of Roman and Neapolitan cuisine. Tomato sauce and pasta (much like olive oil) were rarely consumed in the North of Italy until they became increasingly available, beginning in the 1960s.^{[citation needed]}

In the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and India the term "tomato sauce" normally refers to the condiment otherwise known as tomato ketchup, whereas in Canada and the US, "tomato sauce" replaces "marinara sauce" and never refers to ketchup. In these countries, other sauces made with tomatoes are more usually referred to as pasta sauce etc., depending on their uses. In Australia, the term marinara often refers to a tomato-based seafood dish such as spaghetti marinara or marinara pizza.

Some Italian Americans use the term "gravy" to refer to tomato sauce, especially a tomato sauce with meat. "Sunday gravy" is a common type of long-simmered tomato sauce containing meat (often pork or meatballs; similar to an Italian Neapolitan ragù) that is often identified with Italian-American home cooking. It is generally served over pasta. Others just use the term "sauce" to refer to tomato sauce.^{[citation needed]}

Pizza sauce generally refers to a thick, smooth sauce used as a pizza topping. It is similar to but not identical with a marinara sauce, and they are not considered interchangeable. It is, however, not universal; some pizza styles prefer a topping made of sliced, diced, or ground tomatoes with minimal seasoning.

Escoffier included a tomato sauce recipe using salt pork, butter, and a liaison of wheat flour as one of the mother sauces in his master work, Le Guide Culinaire, but it is not commonly used in French cuisine.

Tomato sauce is also used to some extent in Greek cuisine; it is commonly long-simmered and generally spiced with cinnamon and other typical Greek spices. Tomato sauce is also common in Filipino cuisine, where it is almost universally preferred sweet.

Are there exposure issues with tomato sauce of any sort? Ala egg salad, are there any health risks after being out warm or at room temperature for a number of hours? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.222.217.206 (talk) 11:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC).Reply

Unless the tomato sauce was left in the heat and went off, I don't think there'd be anything wrong with it. Of course, don't go eating it if it looks green or has mold on it - I don't want to be done for food poisoning! Think outside the box 11:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I left a whole pot out overnight after forgetting to put it away, since there was so much of it I couldn't bear to throw it out. I just made sure I heated up to sufficient (140+ F) temperature before reserving. I'm still here.

Can we mention something about Escoffier adding this to the mother sauces? I can write it when I get some time--Chfprd 05:28, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Is there any reason why the term "Dead Horse" is used as a term to describe Tomato Sauce in Australia? I dont see the connection between sauce and horse apart from that it rimes.--MattyC3350 01:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's rhyming slang. Zsero 01:29, 22 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

Which, of course, makes little sense to us Nauth American's who still have all of their R's. 69.95.240.178 (talk) 18:48, 27 June 2008 (UTC)Reply

I think removing all the recipes goes too far. There ought to be links to a few recipes, preferably representative of different styles. I think three or four such links would be ideal. But which ones? -- Zsero (talk) 15:16, 11 March 2008 (UTC)Reply

I was redirected here from Sunday Gravy, but the term isn't used in the article. Either something should be added in this article explaining what the food is, or 'Sunday gravy' should have its own page. -- Rosie85 (talk) 12:15, 3 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

  Done -- 14:14, 3 October 2008 (UTC)