Janet CollinsTomato Sauce and Aussie Tradition
August 29th 2010 13:30
Tomato sauce is one of those things that Australians hold dear. Even chefs gave up long ago chastising anyone asking for some to lather over a perfect steak. Pie sellers, rather than chastise, they just started charging for it, using the user-pay ideology for doing so.
While this imposed charge got a lot of people angry, it marked the end of complimentary sauce as we knew it and even if it was some 20 years ago, people are still talking about it.
Recently I read an article in The Age by journalist John Watson who wrote about how deeply his brother-in-law was offended the first time he was asked to pay extra for sauce when he bought a pie for his daughter. That was 20 years ago and Watson still remembers his brother-in-law’s outrage.
It was quite an amusing article and if anyone is interested it can be viewed here.
Watson’s article was prompted by a trip by Prime Minister Julia Gillard to Townsville when the subject came up about the extra charge for sauce when purchasing a pie.
Gillard is not exactly old but she still remembers the days when sauce came for free with the purchase of a pie and yes, we often now pay for a lot of extras that once upon a time were complimentary.
While user-pays (more or less meaning you pay for everything now that you ask for) was a little too quick to interfere with the age-old tradition of free sauce with a pie, there are still a few added extras that have not had the same sting. So why tomato sauce?
We still get sugar with our coffee without extra cost, even if the sugar – as with the sauce – often comes in sealed sticks or sachets for health reasons. We still get butter on our sandwiches or rolls without extra cost (even if we do have to ask for butter because many people have sworn off butter for health concerns).
Pepper and salt do not incur extra costs and neither does ice in drinks.
So why the assault on tomato sauce and I might add just a little too early in the “user-pays” system?
Recently I learned just how much Australians loved their sauce when at a social function a man was giving very explicit instruction about how to dunk a mini pie into sauce to assure full coverage. His advice was to dunk it face down so that the taste of the sauce lasted until the end.
Some things in our culture are just held so dear that an extra charge for them is just too much to take. Tomato sauce is one of them.
Image credit: www.smh.com.au
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