Ingredients

Servings 4

• 1 lb spaghetti
• 1 lb canned tomatoes
• 2 oz yellow onion
• 2 oz celery
• 2 oz carrot
• 1 clove of garlic
• 5 leaves of basil
• ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 pinch sugar
• 1 oz grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

10 minutes preparation + 20 minutes cooking

Wash, peel or clean and chop the carrot, onion and celery. Place the oil in a saucepan over medium heat, Once hot, add the chopped vegetables and the clove of garlic, unpeeled. Once the vegetables have softened, add the tomatoes cut into pieces, the basil, salt, pepper and sugar. Cook for at least 20 minutes.

When done cooking, pass the sauce through a vegetable mill. 

In the meantime, cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling, salted water.

Drain the pasta when al dente and toss with the tomato sauce, grated Parmigiano Reggiano and a little extra virgin olive oil.

Food History

Even it is practically impossible to say who was the first person to serve spaghetti with tomato sauce, there is no doubt that this recipe appeared written for the first time in “Cucina teorica-pratica col corrispondente riposto ed alcune nozioni di scalcare ... con in fine una cucina casereccia in dialetto napoletano”, a Neapolitan cookbook written by Ippolito Cavalcanti in 1837.
At that time, spaghetti had already been present in Italy for a couple of centuries, while tomato sauce was invented just decades before, in 1762 to be exact. Tomato sauce was created by Lazzaro Spallanzani, a natural-science lover, who first discovered that you can store tomatoes for a long time by boiling them and putting them in hermetically sealed jars. The only thing that can be said with some certainty is that in the first person to pair spaghetti with tomato sauce was Italian.

Other suggested recipes

• Spaghetti with Garlic and Tomato
• Spaghetti with Garlic, Oil and Chili
• Spaghetti with Puttanesca Sauce