Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter

Cookbook author Marcella Hazan brought Italian cooking to American kitchens with singular style: simplicity combined with exactitude. Hazan was already an exalted contributor to Food & Wine when I became editor in chief in 1995. We were so proud to be the magazine where Hazan published her most personal and powerful stories. So I was surprised, in retrospect, to discover that Food & Wine never shared her recipe for Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter in print — until now. First published in The Classic Italian Cook Book in 1973, it was originally called Tomato Sauce III. Marcella also included it in her 1992 cookbook, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, with just four ingredients, not counting the pasta for serving. (This is the version adapted for the recipe.) It became hugely popular, spurring thousands of rave reviews and tributes to Marcella’s particular brand of genius.

The recipe is everything a home cook could ever want — good in any season (no need for fresh tomatoes, but if you have them, use them); minimal cleanup (just one pan); all the ingredients are available at any supermarket in America; it’s cheap; it can be doubled to feed a crowd. You don’t need knife skills — or any kind of skills, really. Your friends will think you’re an awesome cook because the stellar results belie the ease of preparation. In a saucepan, you put the tomatoes, 5 tablespoons of butter, and one whole onion cut in half, then bring them to a simmer, and cook for about 1 hour. You remove the onion and combine the sauce with gnocchi or a pound of pasta. When you taste it, there’s a surprising depth and silkiness because of that big hunk of butter.

With all that going for it, I now wonder, how did I pass up the opportunity to publish this perfect recipe? I searched my brain for the answer — and also reached out to Tina Ujlaki, Marcella’s longtime editor at Food & Wine. Perhaps I was a snob about using canned tomatoes? In the mid-’90s, when I arrived at Food & Wine, I believed that we should only cook with in-season ingredients. That explanation didn’t hold up, though, because I also learned at Food & Wine that anyone who turns their nose up at canned tomatoes is ignorant. Canned tomatoes are always preferable when vine-ripened tomatoes are out of season; preserved at the height of freshness, canned ones have more flavor and are more consistent. Did I think it was too simple, shrugging off the idea because it didn’t seem like enough of a recipe? That didn’t make sense, either, because we selected recipes by taste, not showiness or complexity, and, as we all know by now, this sauce tastes terrific. Ujlaki suggested there was an obvious reason: We never considered publishing the recipe because Hazan and her husband, Victor, didn’t propose it, and we always followed their lead.

Though she may have emanated sweet nonna vibes, cooking meals every day to please Victor’s Italophile palate and teaching cooking classes in her home to novice students, Hazan had strong, unwavering opinions. With Victor as her protector, advocate, and taste tester (and writer — he wrote every piece of copy we published under her name), they were a fierce duo. The stories they wanted to tell followed their curiosity all over Italy and to Longboat Key, Florida, where they moved to be closer to their son, Giuliano. Was the reason they never suggested the recipe, which was inspired by a dish Hazan's mother used to make in Emilia-Romagna, because it was already in a book, and they didn’t think it was worth repeating?

This sauce is a perfect recipe for our readers. Why Victor and Marcella never suggested we run it in Food & Wine, well, that’s something I’ll never know. — Dana Cowin