quote:

Originally posted by VibrationGuy

There’s a reason alcohol makes tomato sauces sing; there are flavor components in tomatoes (the precise ones escape me, but with an hour of research, I could dig it back up if anyone needs a citation) that are insoluble in both water and fat; they’re only alcohol-soluble. By mobilizing these flavor components, the sauce becomes fuller and more tomato-y. Try this with a Bloody Mary some time; the vodka really expands the flavor from just the basic mix.

Eric

I have to question this for the simple reason that when you cook with alcohol by the time the dish is "done" the alcohol has all boiled away in most cases (the exceptions are those situations where the alcohol is added at the end of the cooking process so as not to boil it off) and any substances depending on it for solubility should come back out of solution (as the salt in salt water does when you boil away the water).

The alcohol used in most cooked tomato sauces is wine (again, there are exceptions like vodka sauce) which contains a good deal of sugar and a small dose of sugar can augment the flavor without adding a lot of sweetness.