Sauces · Italian cuisine
Sugo al pomodoro
Italy’s plain tomato sauce – the base on which arrabbiata, puttanesca and dozens more are built.
At a glance
- Origin
- Southern Italy; tomato sauces documented from the late 17th and the 18th century.
- Production
- Tomatoes cooked down with oil and aromatics, sometimes sieved.
- Pairs with
- Pasta; Artusi also recommends it with boiled meat and in risotto.
- Use
- Base for arrabbiata, puttanesca and many other sauces.
Sugo al pomodoro is a simple Italian sauce of tomatoes cooked down with oil and a few aromatics. The tomato reached Italian cooking late: the first known recipe for a tomato sauce in an Italian cookbook appeared in Naples in 1692 (Antonio Latini, Lo scalco alla moderna), as a sauce “in the Spanish style” served with boiled meat; tomato sauces were set out systematically only in a 1773 cookbook, and then for meat, not pasta.
In 1891 Pellegrino Artusi distinguished a “sugo” – just tomatoes cooked and sieved, at most with a little celery, parsley and basil – from a richer “salsa” made with chopped onion, garlic, celery and herbs in oil, cooked to a thin cream and passed through a sieve.
Depending on the region it starts from a soffritto of onion or garlic, in the north also carrot and celery, and in the south it is spiced with chilli.