IQG Foods produces canned chopped tomatoes in Egypt, finely cut flesh combined with its own juice, packed in tin from 400 g to A10. The fruit is peeled, chopped and filled, then sterilised with a pinch of salt and nothing else. The pieces stay visible in the finished dish while the juice carries them into the sauce, which is what separates chopped tomato from both whole peeled and purée.

Three words get used for what looks like the same thing, and buyers in different markets mean different things by them. Chopped tomato is flesh cut into small pieces and returned to its own juice, with the pieces still distinct. Crushed is coarser and more broken, with the fruit pressed rather than cut. Diced is cut to a uniform cube and usually firmer, held that way through the fill.

Ours is chopped in the Italian sense. The pieces are small and even, and they sit in juice rather than in purée, which keeps the texture light enough to pour and thick enough to coat.

The practical difference against whole peeled is time. A whole tomato has to be broken down before it becomes a sauce; chopped arrives already there. For a plant running volume, that removes a step from the line.