No tricks here. This is pretty much what you expect. It is a sauce made from tomatoes. Now, in context of French mother sauces, a sauce tomate typically includes tomatoes (obviously), herbs of some kind (ideally fresh), stock, and rendered pork fat. The second and last one especially can have a lot of variations. For example, if you are making a tomato sauce in the Italian-American tradition, you may use butter instead of rendered pork fat, or you may use the pork fat but use different herbs.

Sauces that are derived from Sauce Tomate include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Bolognese
• Marinara
• Provincale
• Creole Sauce (aka red gravy)

Now, for the more astute or worldly readers, you may be wondering if the timeline for the introduction of tomatoes to Europe allowed for enough time for a rich tradition to develop around such a sauce. Well, tomatoes were introduced to Europe in the 1500s. It took some time before tomatoes were incorporated into French cooking but that happened by the late 1700s (read here, Condiment Claire’s Substack, for more relevant and fun information).