TASTE-TEST : Spaghetti Sauces

All over America harried cooks rush home from work, throw some spaghetti into a pot of boiling water, top it with canned sauce and announce that dinner is ready. Before you start feeling sorry for their families, you should know this: The canned spaghetti sauces that we tasted were, for the most part, both inexpensive and good. Some are better than others, but generally these are very good products.

The proof? After the Food staff sat down to a serious blind taste-test of 10 spaghetti sauces, a couple of us went into the kitchen, cooked up some spaghetti, and had some more for lunch. * 1. Hunt’s Old Country (25.75 ounces/$1.89). Nice thick texture with discernible bits of onion; pleasant tomato flavor. * 2. Conca d’Oro (25 ounces/$4.39). Chunky sauce with a very fresh flavor. * 3. Hunt’s Light (27.5 ounces/$1.29). No fat, no cholesterol--but good texture and good tomato flavor. * 4. Campbell’s Healthy Request (26.5 ounces/$1.29). This had the strongest herbal flavor of the group, and a thick, tomato-paste texture. * 5. Progresso (14 ounces/$1.95). A thinner sauce with a neutral flavor. * 6.--10. Healthy Choice, Newman’s Own, Prego and Ragu each received almost the same number of points. All were very acceptable, but none of our panel of nine tasters selected any of them as his first choice.