{"id":327399,"date":"2026-03-13T08:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T08:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/327399\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T08:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T08:10:08","slug":"woman-shares-secret-watties-tomato-sauce-recipe-from-sir-james-wattie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/327399\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman shares \u2018secret\u2019 Wattie\u2019s tomato sauce recipe from Sir James Wattie"},"content":{"rendered":"

The families were good friends. Bodle-Carswell used to babysit later generations of the Wattie family.<\/p>\n

She said her family grew up making and eating the sauce.<\/p>\n

\"Today'sToday’s Wattie’s in the bottle with the old recipe in the pot. Photo \/ Conor Mertens<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s all we had. Dad had a huge veggie garden. He had half an acre, and half of it was a vegetable garden, and mum always did preserves and made tomato sauce.\u201d<\/p>\n

Violet Edna hated her name, and instead she went by Bunny. She kept an eye on the garden and would sit on a bucket with a gun and shoot rats.<\/p>\n

Bodle-Carswell said news of the closures was \u201cdamn sad\u201d.<\/p>\n

Heinz Wattie\u2019s this week announced plans to shut three New Zealand factories, affecting about 350 jobs.<\/p>\n

When she heard the news, she wanted to make sure the recipe lived on.<\/p>\n

She logged on to Facebook and asked if anyone wanted the recipe. The post was flooded with likes and comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mum passed away in 2004 and my sister in 2001, so when I pass on, the recipe will be lost forever. So why not share it out to people that will appreciate it?\u201d<\/p>\n

The recipe has changed with the passage of time, with a few \u201cmodifications\u201d.<\/p>\n

To put the recipe to the test, the Herald shared the recipe with Conor Mertens, head chef of Elephant Hill Restaurant in Hawke\u2019s Bay, for a review.<\/p>\n

Mertens gathered the ingredients, bought a bottle of Wattie\u2019s sauce for comparison and cooked a batch using Bodle-Carswell\u2019s recipe.<\/p>\n

\"MertensMertens halved the recipe and ended up with three litres of sauce. Photo \/ Conor Mertens<\/p>\n

Then he ordered hot chips.<\/p>\n

The review?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt legit tasted like this could have been the starting point for what became New Zealand\u2019s tomato sauce.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t have the iconic Wattie\u2019s taste.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s less sweet, more spice heavy and honestly, I prefer it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""A“A clear verdict,” said chef Conor Mertens, crowning the 1940s recipe as the winner. Photo \/ Conor Mertens<\/p>\n

Wattie\u2019s \u2018Secret\u2019 Tomato Sauce – 1940s recipe<\/p>\n

Given to Violet Edna Bodle by Sir James Wattie.<\/p>\n

3kg of skinned tomatoes<\/p>\n

1kg of cored apples (leave the skin on the apple)<\/p>\n

3 cups of white sugar<\/p>\n

1kg of chopped onions<\/p>\n

1.1L of malt vinegar<\/p>\n

4 tablespoons of pickling spice<\/p>\n

3 tablespoons of plain salt<\/p>\n

4 tablespoons of paprika<\/p>\n

Place all ingredients in a large pot and boil for 2 hours (stir now and then to stop catching on the bottom), then put through a blender and pour into sterilised bottles with screw lids.<\/p>\n

\"ConorConor Mertens said tomato sauce tastes like the beginning of New Zealand’s iconic Wattie’s one. Photo \/ Conor Mertens<\/p>\n

Bodle-Carswell has given some tips for success. She says \u201cnever, ever\u201d use iodised salt in preserves because it turns things black. And for less sugar, she uses three tablespoons of sugar replacement, like Sugromax, because diabetes runs in the family.<\/p>\n

The easiest way to skin tomatoes is to freeze them and \u201cstick them in water, and the skins just slide right off\u201d.<\/p>\n

If you are using fresh tomatoes, she says, you\u2019ll either have to blanch them in boiling water or cut them in half, grate them, and leave the skin aside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The families were good friends. Bodle-Carswell used to babysit later generations of the Wattie family. She said her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[74,1656,6097,156,71,12506,35698,14054,111,139,69,26859,2171,3016,9096,312,9095,180,6753,8485,544,139159,26206,176333,23359,6923,1354,80],"class_list":["post-327399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-after","tag-company","tag-down","tag-entertainment","tag-from","tag-gisborne","tag-hearing","tag-james","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-operations","tag-plans","tag-recipe","tag-sauce","tag-says","tag-secret","tag-shares","tag-shut","tag-sir","tag-some","tag-spilled","tag-tomato","tag-wattie","tag-watties","tag-what","tag-woman","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}