KITCHEN PRACTICE 2 — Sauce Tomate, Passed Through a Sieve
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Chapter: French Cookery 5 — The Mother Sauces II

TASK
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Make a sauce tomate, passing it through a fine sieve at the end. If
you have access to Italian Cookery's own sugo, taste the two side by
side and compare their texture directly.

WHAT TO DO
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1. Gently cook diced onion (and, if you like, a little diced bacon
   or pork) in a pot until soft.
2. Add crushed or whole tomatoes and a small amount of stock (either
   white or brown), and season lightly.
3. Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have
   fully broken down and the mixture looks thick and jammy.
4. Push the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve using the back of a
   ladle, or through a food mill if you have one, working in batches
   if needed. Discard the skins and seeds left behind.
5. Taste the finished sauce tomate. If you have a batch of Italian
   Cookery's own tomato sugo on hand (or can make a small batch),
   taste the two side by side.

WHAT TO EXPECT
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- The sieved sauce tomate should look and feel genuinely smooth —
  no visible seeds, skins, or chunks at all, closer to a thick,
  pourable purée than a chunky sauce.
- If comparing against the Italian sugo directly, the difference
  should be immediately obvious by sight alone before you even taste
  either one — the sugo keeps real, visible texture from its own
  hand-crushed tomatoes, while the sauce tomate has none left.
- Flavour-wise, both should taste recognisably of tomato, but the
  sauce tomate may taste slightly rounder and less rustic, partly a
  result of the smoother texture itself changing how the sauce reads
  on the tongue.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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The sieving step is the one thing separating a French sauce tomate
from an Italian-style sugo built from nearly identical ingredients —
tasting both side by side (or at least making the sieved version
deliberately) demonstrates that texture is a genuine, intentional
design choice in each tradition, not an accident of what ingredients
happened to be on hand.