What it is
A delicate tomato water from Salerno province, especially Cilento and the Piana del Sele, made as a lightly salty, fresh-smelling liquid derived from tomato processing.
Origin place card
The source places it in Salerno province, especially upper and lower Cilento and the municipalities of the Piana del Sele.
Verified history
The official page preserves an August household memory: wooden madie full of tomatoes drying in the sun, women squeezing ripe tomatoes by hand, and the excess liquid saved to enrich soups. Treat this as source-supported tradition/history from Regione Campania — Acqua di pomodoro; the current evidence does not independently establish a founder, precise origin date, first attestation, or archival origin beyond that source framing.
Local hypothesis
The page should be one of TIFA’s anti-waste jewels: a by-product turned into a stock, a summer memory turned into a bottle.
Local legend / oral tradition
No legend documented; oral/domestic memory is the women hand-squeezing tomatoes and refusing to waste the liquid.
Ingredients
Tomatoes, salt; no additives or preservatives besides salt, according to the product description. Source-supported detail: Descrizione E’ un liquido acquoso di colore rosso-arancione tenue che può risultare più chiaro se ottenuto da pomodoro gialli, può rilasciare sedimenti rossastri più o meno chiari se depositato per lungo periodo, odore di pomodoro fresco, dolce con note finali
Method
Select and wash tomatoes by hand, crush through a tomato mill, heat the passata to 90–95°C with salt, filter/separate the liquid, bottle in glass, seal, sterilize in autoclave and label. Source-supported detail: Assenza di additivi e conservanti tranne il sale.
Ritual / calendar
Energia da 20 a 25 kcal per 100 gr; sale da 1 a 1,5 gr per 100 gr.
Why travel for it
This is the kind of page that can make a reader smell August in Cilento and understand why even tomato water mattered.
Recreate-it pathway
Do not turn this into a casual raw-water recipe; modern production uses heat, filtration and sterilization.
Editorial warning
Clarify whether this is sold by producers today and how it differs from chef-style tomato water.
Fieldwork questions
Glass bottle, tomato passata, August madie memory, Cilento/Piana del Sele fields.
Photo brief
A