Family recipes are funny things. Some come with impeccable provenance. Ours comes with rumours. Everyone credits my grandmother, but nobody seems to know where she got it. Since then, every generation has quietly “improved” the recipe until the finished product bears only a passing resemblance to whatever she was actually making in the first place.

Our spaghetti sauce has been in the family for generations. It is almost certainly pushing one hundred years old.

According to family lore, someone in my family, perhaps my grandparents, perhaps my great grandparents, lived above an Italian restaurant in Montreal. The owner supposedly shared the recipe. At least that’s what my mom always told me.

Naturally, I assumed I’d uncover some wonderful story about an old neighbourhood trattoria, a generous Italian cook and a treasured handwritten recipe.

Instead, I found absolutely nothing.

I spent countless hours digging through census records, city directories, birth certificates, immigration records, newspaper archives and old Montreal addresses trying to identify this mysterious restaurant. I uncovered plenty about my family.

The restaurant?

It has all the physical evidence of Bigfoot.

Maybe it existed. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe someone simply knew an Italian neighbour who made an exceptional sauce. Maybe after ninety years of retelling, “lived above an Italian restaurant” became a much better story than “Mrs. Rossi from downstairs gave me the recipe.”

We’ll probably never know.

What I do know is that every member of the family apparently believed recipes were merely rough philosophical guidelines.

One version calls for six onions.

Another says three.

A third insists two is enough.

Apparently there was an onion crisis nobody bothered to document.

Then there is the tomato juice situation.

One recipe uses a single can.

Another demands three.

That’s not a minor tweak. That’s an entirely different sauce.

Garlic doesn’t fare much better.

One handwritten version proudly includes one lonely clove.

One.

As though it accidentally wandered into the pot while looking for somewhere else to be.

Another recipe recommends a tablespoon of chili flakes.

A tablespoon.

That isn’t spaghetti sauce anymore. That’s witness protection for your taste buds.

The oil measurements are equally inspiring.

One version calls for two shot glasses of oil.

Another specifies a wine glass.

Neither bothers to explain whose shot glass or whose wine glass we’re talking about.

Then comes the cooking time.

Three hours.

Five hours.

Or simply, “combine and cook slowly,” which is less of a recipe and more of a life philosophy.

Some family members strain the vegetables.

Others throw everything into a blender.

At this point, I’m convinced the only universal instruction is, “Eventually it becomes red.”

The funny thing is, after researching both my family and Italian immigration to Montreal, I started wondering if maybe this strange recipe isn’t so strange after all.

Italian immigration to Montreal exploded between the late 1800s and the 1920s. Many newcomers came from Campania, Calabria, and Sicily, bringing tomato based sauces that had been part of their family tables for generations. But they also had to cook with what was available and affordable in Quebec.

Fresh basil wasn’t sitting in every grocery store. Canned tomatoes varied wildly in quality. Tomato juice was inexpensive and readily available. Dried herbs were practical. Long simmering helped tame acidic tomatoes while stretching inexpensive ingredients into meals that could feed an entire family. Even garlic was often used sparingly because many North American customers found it far too strong.

Viewed through that lens, a sauce built around tomato juice, plenty of onions, dried herbs and an afternoon on the stove doesn’t seem particularly odd. It might even have been fairly typical of an Italian Canadian kitchen in Montreal during the 1920s or 1930s, even if someone in Naples would politely pretend not to know who made it.

What’s much harder to explain is the family recipe phenomenon.

Somewhere along the way, one cook forgets how much oil went into the pot. Another decides garlic causes heartburn. Someone hears “a little chili” and somehow translates that into enough pepper flakes to qualify as a controlled substance.

Before long, every handwritten recipe has drifted into its own alternate universe.

And that’s what I love most about old family recipes.

They’re less like legal documents and more like oral history. Every cook leaves fingerprints behind. Every generation edits something. Every stained recipe card tells you as much about the person who copied it as the person who first wrote it.

So which version is the authentic one?

Probably none of them.

Or maybe all of them.

After comparing every handwritten note, every grease stained recipe card and every family opinion delivered with complete confidence despite contradicting everyone else’s, I settled on a version that feels right.

It honours the original while making enough sense that future generations won’t need a detective, a genealogist and a team of historians just to make supper.

Below is my interpretation of the recipe, alongside a few examples of my family’s wonderfully contradictory instructions.

If nothing else, maybe one day someone will finally solve the mystery of the Italian restaurant.

I’m not holding my breath.

The sauce, however, is worth waiting for.

---

CoolFoodDude’s Version of My Grandma’s Spaghetti Sauce

This Italian Canadian spaghetti sauce is my version of my grandmother’s recipe, a simple tomato sauce that relies on time rather than a long list of ingredients. Tomato juice, tomato paste, onions, garlic, olive oil and a little oregano and crushed chilli are cooked very gently for several hours, then strained until smooth.

The sauce takes some patience, but very little hands on work. The onions and garlic slowly infuse the sauce as it cooks, and straining everything at the end leaves you with a smooth, deeply flavoured sauce that is perfect for spaghetti or your favourite pasta.

Makes

About 6 cups

Ingredients

• ⅓ cup olive oil
• 5 cloves garlic, lightly smashed
• 3 large Spanish onions, cut into rings
• 2 cans (156 mL/5 oz each) tomato paste
• 1 large can (1.36 L/46 oz) tomato juice
• ½ teaspoon dried oregano
• ½ teaspoon crushed chilli peppers
• Water, as needed

Method

1. Warm the olive oil.
   Add the olive oil to a large, heavy pot and warm gently over low heat. Add the smashed garlic and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, just until fragrant. Do not let the garlic brown.
2. Add the onions and tomatoes.
   Add the onions, tomato juice and tomato paste. Stir well to combine.
3. Season the sauce.
   Add the oregano and crushed chilli peppers and stir.

4. Cook slowly.
   Bring the sauce to a very gentle simmer, then reduce the heat to low. Partially cover the pot and cook for about 4 hours, stirring occasionally. The sauce should barely bubble as it cooks. It will gradually thicken and become darker and more concentrated in flavour. If the sauce becomes too thick before the 4 hours are up, add a little water as needed.

   The sauce is ready when it has thickened noticeably and the flavours have mellowed and deepened.

5. Strain the sauce.
   Remove the sauce from the heat and let it stand for 10 to 15 minutes. This allows it to cool slightly, making it easier and safer to handle while it is still warm enough to strain easily.

   Carefully pour the sauce through a fine mesh strainer set over a large bowl or pot. Press on the softened onions and garlic with the back of a spoon to extract as much sauce as possible. Straining the sauce while it is warm makes the process easier and helps extract as much flavour as possible from the cooked vegetables.

   Discard the solids.

6. Serve or store.
   Serve the sauce immediately with spaghetti or your favourite pasta. To store, let the sauce cool, then refrigerate.