Sauces · Czech cuisine
Czech tomato sauce
Czech rajská omáčka: a sweet-and-sour tomato sauce with cinnamon, cloves and roux – for beef and stuffed peppers.
At a glance
- Origin
- Czech bourgeois cooking of the 19th and 20th centuries.
- Production
- Onion and whole spices in butter, flour, tomatoes and stock, seasoned sweet-and-sour and strained.
- Ratio
- Janků-Sandtnerová for 5: 40 g butter, 40 g flour and 10 tomatoes.
- Pairs with
- Boiled beef with bread dumplings; stuffed peppers.
- Use
- The same sauce is used for stuffed peppers.
Czech tomato sauce (rajská omáčka) is a tomato sauce thickened with roux and spiced in the manner of old bourgeois cooking. Its name comes from the old Czech word for tomatoes, “paradise apples” (rajská jablíčka).
In 1947 Janků-Sandtnerová fries onion in butter with whole pepper, allspice, cinnamon, bay leaf, thyme, clove, lemon peel and a spoonful of sugar, dusts it with flour, adds fresh or preserved tomatoes, pours in stock or water, simmers it, sharpens it with lemon or vinegar, sweetens it and strains it; a little red wine may be added at the end.
The sweet-and-sour style has older roots: in the 1849 German edition Rettigová cooks tomatoes in wine, thickens them with soaked bread roll and, for a tart version, sweetens them with sugar and sharpens them with lemon. Rajská differs from Italian sugo al pomodoro in its roux, spices and sugar.