Subj : pasta sauces
To : DAVE DRUM
From : JIM WELLER
Date : Sun Jul 31 2022 20:47:00
-=> Quoting Dave Drum to Jim Weller <=-
DD> Angelo's ... meat sauce ... Really sweet.
There's two rationales behind that:
-1- In the past tomatoes were more acidic than they are today.
Enough so that old time recipes for canning tomatoes called for the
boiling water bath treatment but modern ones call for pressure
canning as tomatoes are no longer acid enough any more to prevent
botulism. So yes, a lot of older Italians would put a small amount
of sugar in their red sauces, about the same amount as they would
salt.
The only people I have ever encountered who made really sweet
sauce were Germans and Danes. They really don't get the concept.
-2- Sicily was Arabic long before it was Italian, and Phoenician
(Lebanese), Carthaginian (Tunisian) and Byzantine (Turkish) before
that. This is reflected even today in Sicilian cuisine when compared
to central and northern Italy's. They tend to add sugar to their
tomato sauces whereas northerners do not.
For the same reason, they also occasionally add mint to the standard
mix of Italian herbs parsley, basil, oregano, marjoram and thyme
that go into a red sauce, while northerners (and the Slovenians)
might add summer savory.
DD> put the sugo in the sauce
You've said that before but sugo isn't sugar, it's the word for
sauce as in sugo di carne,
Cheers
Jim
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