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sauce is so simple to make ..... i never used sauce out of a can, to tell you the truth. or a bottle, or a jar.. and i don't like cans of tomatoes with spices already in them.

whenever anyone uses pre-seasoned tomatoes or i guess, sauce in a can, i can tell right away. and i like olive oil in my sauce, another ingredient that's probably not in a canned or bottled sauce.

so, for me it's reality of taste.

It's definitely not in our heads. There's so much high-fructose corn syrup and other junk in tomato sauce that it's really like liquid candy. It's way too sweet. There is not sugar in tomato sauce.

A good, fresh tomato sauce should taste like tomatoes and not cotton candy. A long-cooked ragu or sugo should be rich and lush with the essence of the meats - The Galloping Gourmet used to call that "unctuous."

Jarred sauce is so sweet, it gives me a chill if I even try to eat it. I've had hot fudge sauce that wasn't as sweet as some jarred sauces.

Telling indeed!

But I'd like to ask the question, "Is there such thing as good, pre-made ricotta ravioli?"

Trader Joes' jarred marinara sauce isn't bad--it's actually a little underseasoned to my taste, so I can do what I want with it if I need tomato sauce in a hurry.

Okay, just to be clear, here...when you say you put tomato sauce from a can on the pasta, you mean the stuff that's labeled "spaghetti sauce" or something similar that's allegedly ready to go onto noodles -- you're not talking about the stuff labeled "tomato sauce" which is a basic tomato product -- right?

I'm not a big fan of the prepared spaghetti sauces. Some of them aren't horrible and can be made better with the addition of other ingredients, but if I'm going to do that, I might as well buy the basic tomato products and make a sauce.

As far as your experiment, your friends gave their opinion when you asked the first time (they taste the same) but when you told them one was from a can, the changed opinion might have been the result of altered perception coupled with a desire to compliment your cooking. If you gave them two identical plates and said that one came from a can and you slaved over the stove all day for the other, most people would tell you the homemade one was much better because they'd want to make you feel good about your efforts, even though they'd privately be thinking that it wasn't worth the effort since they're both the same.

If they tasted little difference between your sauce and the canned stuff to begin with, it's sort of interesting. I'd be more curious about that. Did you find a good canned sauce? Was your home made sauce recipe flawed? Are your friends that unable to tell the difference between two different sauces? Was it because they were served the products one at a time instead of side-by-side so they could go back and forth to compare? Did the storebought ravioli overwhlem the sauce?

I do believe that perception overrides actual taste. I can definitely tell from watching my 10 month old eat. When we switch foods on him, like from sweet potatoes to chicken he always makes a sour face even though we know chicken is his favorite cause he expected it to taste differently. Also I got my wife to take the Grey Goose / Smirnoff blind challenge and she hasn't bought a bottle of Grey Goose since.

@CJ McD I am also a big fan of the Di Fratelli brand. Their crushed and whole tomatoes generally have the least salt or sugar of the canned brands. I often just whip up a red sauce with a can of crushed tomatoes, some herbs (often basil, parsley, oregano) and garlic. It takes about 10 minutes to do that while the water for the pasta boils. I haven't had any actual sauce from a jar in a long, long time. Which the last time I had it I though was too salty and dense and lacked tomato flavor.

I agree with Chiffonade that most of the jarred sauces from conventional supermarkets use artificial sweetners/thickeners etc. Yuck!

But I will admit to using a basic unflavored, tomato-only 8oz can of sauce as a base when I'm making my own sauce. Then I add fresh tomatoes, garlic, herbs, etc, maybe a tablespoon a paste and some chicken stock, and simmer it for about an hour.

Stewing down tomatoes to make a sauce takes hours - as opposed to what I view as a relish, which takes a less time but isn't as saucy.

Is that bad? Should I just throw out all my shoes and stop seeing my dentist? ;)

We always had sauce from a jar or a can. It wasn't until college when my boyfriend made me sauce from scratch (his grandmother's recipe) that I realized how easy it was. I try to make it as often as possible (I use canned tomatoes though) but every now and then I buy a jar of Newman's Own as a quick backup.

I think premade sauces vary. I can't eat Prego (which is what I grew up on) anymore because it's too sweet. But I've had some jarred sauces that aren't sweet. It depends on the type.

I made a simple tomato sauce this morning that took about 45 minutes to simmer and it was done. It was so good I was eating it with a spoon. You can't get THAT out of a jar. As Chiff said earlier...it really was unctuous.

When my tomatoes are ready in the garden I can make some with those babies!!!

@bobbob - I'm sure they're using "unctuous" to refer to how rich the sauce is...the way it kind of coats your mouth. Makes sense because one of the meanings of the word is "greasy" or "smooth".

With tomato sauce, slathered on ravioli, it can be hard to tell, given there are so many different elements interfering with the taste. That's whey when they do taste tests, they sometimes just sample the ingredients 'plain' even if they are foods you would otherwise never consume 'plain' like balsamic vinegar.

That said, I must admit I'm just not a huge fan of Italian food, and I'm not a great connoisseur of tomato sauce. I grew up on Ragu and on the rare occasions I do eat it, I don't buy canned because I don't want a lot of extra stuff in it, but I'm not one of those people who lives and dies by marinara sauce.

If I've got all day and fresh tomatoes, I make a vat of slow-simmered sauce and freeze portions for later. Then when I want it, it's there. If I'm in a real hurry, I can make a 10-minute fresh sauce that's done before the water comes to a boil. Sigh. At high altitude, the water takes soooo long to come to a boil.

Man, I remember when those jarred sauces appeared. My dad seldom complained about food, but he was never happy with jarred sauce. Sometimes my mother would start with that stuff, then add spices, garlic, meat, more canned tomatoes, and he'd be fine with it. She felt like it was some sort of victory because she fooled him with a jarred sauce, but she spent just as much time and effort as she would have if she had started with canned tomato products instead of the jarred sauce.

I admit...I do use some good 'ol pasta sauce - as a BASE. I doctor mine every time - with fresh basil, garlic, a jar of my Granny's tomatoes if I have them, and a pinch of Garli Ghetti from the Gilroy Garlic Festival. I like Ragu (or something similar) - Six Cheese or Parmesan/Romano flavored. I grew up on the canned stuff my mom used to mix with ground beef, and swore never to go back again, but I'm a cheater nonetheless :)

I forgot to say that one of our local TV stations reached out to the Italian community several years ago now, and got half a dozen Italian ladies to come in and test jarred and tinned sauces - for some reason, every one of those ladies was elderly - they tasted at least a dozen different sauces over the course of the day and they unanimously agreed one sauce to be the best and most like "homemade" - it was a tin of Unico (I am in Canada, so I don't know if it is in the U.S. as well,) plain, and the cheapest of the lot at under $1.

If someone used one of the regular canned sauces, like Prego or something, I would be able to tell right away.

Conversely, if someone makes a fresh tomato sauce with fresh basil and other ingredients, I would presumably be able to tell (hasn't happened to me yet, unfortunately). But, in my opinion the taste between Prego and a from-scratch sauce is pretty big.

There is a lot of room in between, though... there are some tomato sauces that use more natural ingredients, and have a better flavor (don't have that "sweet syrup" taste). Then there's buying a sauce and simmering it with additional herbs and such. Not sure if I would be able to tell in that case.

Perhaps your friends were simply expressing their admiration for a homemade sauce versus the presumably less healthy store-bought sauce that has ingredients, such as corn syrup, that they don't wish to consume?