Recipe from my mother. This sauce is so sweet it keeps very well, and is quite a hit with children. It has better flavour than the commercial varieties.
I would previously cook the sauce then strain it through a seive, but when a very kind neighbour gifted the Rigamonti food mill, it made more sense to put the tomatoes through that first, then just remove the cloves at the end of cooking before bottling. Unfortunately remove the cloves is rather time consuming or requires a more suitable seive than I have so I am considering making and using a spice bag for the cloves during cooking.
Ready to cook.
| | Tomato | Vinegar | Sugar | Cloves | Salt | Garlic | Cayenne |
| | 8lb | ¾ pint | 2lb | ½oz | 2 tablespoons | 1 clove | ¼ tsp |
| | 3.63kg | 426mL | 907g | 14.2g | 40g | 10g | ¼ tsp |
| | 3kg | 350mL | 750g | 12g | 33g | 8.3g | < ¼ tsp |
| | 2.5kg | 294mL | 625g | 9.8g | 27.5g | 6.9g | << ¼ tsp |
| | 2kg | 235mL | 500g | 8g | 22g | 5.5g | > ⅛ tsp |
| | 1.5kg | 176mL | 375g | 6g | 16.5g | 4g | ⅛ tsp |
| | 1kg | 117mL | 250g | 4g | 11g | 2.8g | < ⅛ tsp |
- Measure the vinegar, sugar, cloves, salt, garlic (crush it) and cayenne into a 5L pot.
- Wash tomatoes and cut in half if large.
- Feed the tomatoes through a food mill to remove the skin and most of the seeds. If at first the skin and seeds are still very juicy, feed them through again at the end until they are too dry to go through the mill anymore.
- Add tomato juice/pulp to the other ingedients and boil until reduced to about ½ volume. This takes at least 2½ to 3 hours
- Remove the cloves
- Use sterilized glass jars or bottles to store the hot sauce. It does not require sealing wax, but if the jars "vacuum seal" that is an advantage.
Page last updated: 04 Mar, 2026
