Humans have enjoyed commercially produced tomato sauce since the mid-19th century, but many have been struggling to get it out of the bottle ever since.

Now, science may have discovered a better way to get to the bottom of that bottle. Researcher Dr Anthony Stickland, who teaches chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Melbourne, says there is a proper way to coax sauce from its home.

As Dr Stickland explained to Pursuit, tomato sauce is actually a “soft solid” like paint or toothpaste, which means it doesn’t yield to pressure the way that milk or water does.

“With tomato sauce, it’s got all of the solid particles of the pulp of the tomato sticking it all together,” he said in an accompanying YouTube video. “And so those solid particles create a network that has a strength to it, and you need to apply enough force to overcome the strength of that network to make the sauce flow.”