Ketchup

confusing than you might anticipate. You know, I was wondering if we should start by confessing the strange things that we put catch up on, because you just assume everybody has some strange thing they put catch upon. But I realize I am so boring. When it comes to catch up. They go on fries for French fries, I put it today. These days, I put catch up on French fries if I have them, and put them on tater tots if I have them. Um, what else? That's those are the

main things. Really. Um. If I'm making my own cocktail sauce off, it's obviously I use ketchup as the base for that. But um, yeah, Aside from that, I didn't. I don't think I ever had any strange ketchup habits growing up. I would I think I would occasionally take a baked potato and cut it up into rounds and put ketchup on that with two to the slightly slight disapproval, I think of the rest of the table. But my argument was, look, this is essentially the same as French fries.

We put catch up on French fries. I'm just doing this to my baked potato instead of covering it in butter and sour cream and what have you. How about you, seth Do you put ketchup on soft serve? He says no, My my son doesn't even put ketchup on anything. And he's certainly at that age where you see a lot of uh, you know, strange ketchup or even sort of catch up first strategies like one I've definitely seen before, and maybe I did see him do this when he

was younger. I was like to take a French fry, dip it in the catch up, lick the ketchup off the French fry, get the French fry again, and essentially use the French fry as a soggy delivery system for that sweet uh you know, sweet and vinegary and salty, uh, you know, overpowering taste profile that is Ketchup. You know. I was looking at the Hinz website earlier today and I found one page where they were like they were trying to, i think, advertise the benefits of Ketchup beyond

just it tasting good. And they're like, you can use Ketchup to get your kids to eat healthy foods. Just put Ketchup on healthy foods and then they'll eat them. And I was thinking, I don't know what, how exactly does that work? And you put ketchup on spinach and then they spinach, you put it on sweet potatoes, and I don't know. Uh yeah. I mean, look, I don't have a lot of room to to talk on this because my my son is fortunately has always been a

very good eater. But I can imagine if you're having you're struggling just trying to get any food uh into a young child, you you would you would turn to put and ketchup on just about any thing to make it happen. You know, we don't want to vilify ketchup today because catch up already in many ways has a pretty bad reputation, especially among foodies, and you know, people have sophisticated palates. I think sometimes look at ketchup as a thing that's just ruining the culinary world. It's it's

worldwide global homogeneity in in cuisine. Uh makes everything taste the same. It just crushes individual flavor profiles of foods and signals that like, you don't want to taste anything for itself. Yeah, generally it's considered an insult to reach for or ask for the catch up when you order something at a really nice restaurant or even just a

passively nice restaurant. Um, unless of course, you have ordered the burger and fries or some st man or of fries and it comes with, say a housemaid ketchup that is exclusively used for uh, for dipping. But then again, you get French fries at a at a nicer place, they're probably gonna have some other dipping options that are also fantastic that deviate from the standard ketch up trope smoked tomato, mayonnaise or something. Yeah, that's sort of thing.

And certainly we have more condiment possibilities available to us now because but but for the long guest like catch up, you know what, Like, that's what we grew up with. You know that the ketchup is what you got it all the fast food restaurants, and today you go to just about any restaurant and there will be ketch up there. Um, it's gonna be there in pumps and bottles and packets, in slices even well, I don't know how many restaurants are really leaning on the ketchup slices, but ketchup slices

do exist. Yeah, if you haven't seen it, they're like the craft singles basically. Basically, someone said, you know that, you know the hardened, dried ketchup that coagulates around the cap? What have I had a whole slice of that? Wouldn't that be great? I don't know, maybe it is great. I have not tried it. But that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Is is the world of ketchup? Where does it come from? What is it? And why? Why is it so potent? Why is it's so powerful?

It's something we all take for granted, but it has an interesting story. So what is ketchup usually made of? Today? When you get tomato ketchup in a bottle, your standard stuff, you know, not the weird kind, just the standard ketchup you get at the store, at the diner. When we think of ketchup and we think of that that thick red stuff you squeeze out of a m out of a bottle, you're generally talking about tomato, sauce, sugar or another sweetener, vinegar, salt, and some sort of proprietary blend

of spices and seasonings, industrial additives, maybe preservatives, something like that. Yeah, And I think commonly your tomato element and your sugar element are probably going to be tomato paste and higher discorn syrup. Yeah, highfrid discorn serrup has of course become the standards, especially here in the United States. But that being said, and as we'll touch on later, like you can find a lot of ketchups on the market, including ones from hines that that are sweetened, say with with

a sugar or honey, or reduce sugar and honey. You know, there are plenty of other options out there now. When in previous decades, though, I think it was it was pretty much you had the one choice right right, So when we when we dip a fern fry and catch up where we put ketch up on our you know, our burgers are hot dogs or wantons, whatever you're you're putting it on. You know, it brings that blessed sweet, sour and salty taste to any bite. So it's it's

potent stuff. It delivers several things that we as organisms are hardwired to crave uh and and crave it we do. That's why you see some serious pump abuse sometimes at your local fast food restaurants, you know, where they'll they'll they'll fill up not one cup, not too but maybe three or four just to make sure they're they're covering all their ground there, you know, they have all their options available to them, or just pump it all over top a big pile of fries. People do that. I'm

not of that school. I'm a dipper, not a drizzler. Yeah, I prefer to because if it's drizzled, you're gonna end up with that one French fry that is that is drowned lost to the catchup um. But then again, I think that has a benefit as you you know, as many of us become a little wiser as we get older, and we realized we should not eat all the French fries better than some of the French fries drowned and become inedible, than to actually polish off the entire plate.

But again, ketchup has a an overpowering at times flavor profile. Uh. And it goes really well with certain things obviously. Uh. And it's and it's good to have an overpowering flavor profile if you're eating something that is say, less than appetizing. Um. But it's certainly gonna insult the chef if you reach for it when you're having, you know, something that has

a very delicate and planned out flavor profile itself. And something I should say in addition to so you mentioned that ketchup tends it's got this trio of flavors that we like in a lot of sauces. It's got sweetness, it's got acidity or sourness, and it's got saltiness. But it's also got this other thing that's harder to define. It's the the umami flavor. It comes from the tomatoes,

for you know, from the it is from the fermentation. Uh. It's this savory, you know, deliciousness kind of quality that that's a little bit um. It's not as sharper as easily noticeable as the other three types of flavors. But you really value it in many foods that you like, and so it shouldn't become as a surprise that, especially in the United States, it has become such a popular condiment.

I see that the number kind of varies. But for instance, in a two thousand fourteen article from on the National Geographic website, how was ketchup invented? By Jasmine and Wiggins Uh, the author sites nine percent of American households report having a bottle of the stuff around. That is a I mean, that's a huge number. That's a huge number. I've seen it. I've seen it higher, generally by ketchup companies, and I've

also seen it a little lower. But I mean, you know, without you know, arguing over the exact number, like it is a very widespread condiment, not only here, but now you know, in various places around the world. But yet, there was a time before ketchup. There was a time when there was no ketchup. And we're going to begin our journey by by traveling back in time. Let's get some time travel sound effects. Can we can we blue blue, blue blup or something? All right, Well, so we're traveling back. Yes,

we're seeking that time before ketchup? Was there a time before Ketchup? Yes? But also no, because I told you this is gonna be a little more confused in the might think because in a large sense we have to consider the legacy of the condiment, of the sauce itself, and to think about its inception. You know, what, what does it mean to put a sauce on something? Like? What is what is ketchup itself? You know what is

what is it essentially doing? And it's pointed out in Pure Ketchup, a History of America's National condiment with recipes by Andrew F. Smith, who who will keep coming back to because Andrew seems to be the one of the primary authorities on the history of ketchup. He's like the world Ketchup lore master. He's the l Rond of the Saruman of Ketchup. Yes, but according to Smith, humans have attempted to preserve foods with salt for thousands of years.

It retards the growth of bacteria, and salt and water used like this, you know, is known as brining. Brian something just right, and certain species of bacteria produce lactic acid, which kills off harmful of that bacteria and lowers the pH It also creates an environment suitable for fermentation, and this changes the flavor. Yeah, this pickling. Yeah, And of course we have pickling traditions in culture is just around

the world. And we can easily do an entire episode just on pickling and food preserve preservation that I think we will. Yeah, that that in and of itself is a is a fascinating topic, especially when you get into all the varied forms of it um from like burying

a bunch of dead birds in the earth. You know too well, the earth does play a role in a number of different fermentation uh uh strategies that were developed, the idea of taking something, taking a few ingredients, bundling it away in the darkness of the earth, and then bringing it back up when you need it when the

time of the harvest has grown cold. But as a Smith points out, fermented sauces were certainly used by ancient peoples to enhance flavors in their food as well as and this is key to hide unpleasant odors because you know, a lot of times, especially in the ancient world or any time prior to our our modern age of of of food abundance and food waste. You know, you often have you had what you had, and sometimes it might not smell that pleasant or taste that pleasant, but it

was what was for dinner. Uh. It was the meal, and you had to choke it down one way or the other. Uh, And so you might need to cover up the underlying flavor or odor. So it's when a bottle of ketchup would have come in real handy back then, exactly. And they didn't quite have ketchup certainly, But the Greeks and the Romans used something called garum, Smith says, which was a fermented fish sauce. It was itself a byproduct of salting tons of foot fish as a means of

preserving those fish. Yeah, and there are modern analogs of of garum. There's an Italian cuisine. There's this stuff called colatura. That's this you know, salty fermented fish sauce flavor that's delicious. In Asian cuisines, you've got various forms of fish sauce like nonpla oyster sauces, etcetera. Yeah, exactly. So you take some seafood you'd heavily salted, and you get an extract from it. Um that is this funky, highly savory, ummi

rich salty kind of thing, and it's great. You know, that stuff is great, not just in the you know, the cuisines it's traditionally associated with, but chefs today use, for example, Asia Southeast Asian style fish sauce in all kinds of things. You'll find chefs putting uh Thai fish sauce and beef stews and in chili and bolonnaise and everything anyway anywhere you want to like boost the beefy flavor of food. And they vary a lot, not only

in their their flavor, but also in their consistency. Yeah, it was a summer, very thick, there's a very watery uh and and I always any anytime you visit um uh you know, a new you know, Asian restaurant, do try all of the sauces, especially the ones you are not familiar with, just to get a good uh you know, a good you know, overall of the taste sensations available. Totally. So yes, obviously, we have a wealth of pickling traditions from around the world. Though it's a Smith points out

in the media. In the medieval world, in the medieval European world, the byproduct of those pickling endeavors were often just discarded instead of being reutilized as some sort of a sauce um. And uh, I have to say that my my son does not adhere to this, as he loves to drink down the pickle juice from the pickle jar. He'll drink down the sardine oil from the sardine can. Uh he is, he does, he does not waste any

of it. Well, first of all, I can sympathize because of course pickles are delicious and and that liquid therefore is also somewhat delicious. But second, this springs up. I don't even know if we should get into this. This

is we probably should. Okay, I don't want to spend half an hour talking about this, but I just had to mention my favorite article of all time from my hometown newspaper, the Chattanooga Times Free Press, hit Caught in a Pickle Chattanooga attorney Collma friends explain strange addiction and

it's about people who can't stop drinking pickle juice. The main figure in this article is a local lawyer who tells these stories about how when he's driving home from more he would stop at the grocery store and he'd get a jar of pickles and take him out to his car, and he dump all the pickles out in the parking lot and just guzzle down all the juice. But now he's figured out that the smarter and more economical thing is just to buy jugs of pickle juice,

like dill pickle juice by itself. You can order it from I don't know, various manufacturers. I guess some people just add their cucumbers straight to dill pickle juice. But there are these accompanying photos on the Times Free Press website of this guy posing with a gallon jug of dill pick old Brian. That's a stigious award. Yes, I

love this. Uh this, I mean I've I've I've read articles about like people who are such fermentation enthusiasts that they and and sometimes they you know, they back this up with arguments about the you know, the health benefits of fermented products, and and they'll they'll sometimes take on

like a very fermentation heavy diet. But I also have heard just anecdotal accounts so that I think my my aunt was really into crowd juice for it for a long time, and maybe still is just just because she liked it or for like like health remody kind of, I think it was because she just like the flavor. Yeah,

well I love pickles too. I don't go that far, but yeah, it reminds me that the Hannibal Burriss stand up comedy debt where he's talking about saving the jar of pickles pickled juice after all the pickles are gone, so that he can flick it onto his grilled cheese sandwich. I don't know this bit. It sounds smart, Yeah, like it Basically it's like a it's it's a bit about roommates and not one in the roommate to throw out the pickle juice because the pickle st juice still has

use and it can still be flicked onto. And I think that that gets down to what we're talking about here, Like, yes, the the resulting h pickle juice is still still packs flavor.

It can still be used to enhance other foods. So even though the you know, in the medieval uh European world, people weren't that into saving their their food preparation juices, uh, still you had traditions of creating sauces from early Greek times onward, Europeans made sauces that were based in large part on vinegar raging for ranging from the simple to

the complex, and they grew very complex in Elizabethan Britain. Uh. Sauce, after all, is where we get the the saucer from which is of course ends up being so vitally connected with the t culture that grows out of Britain. It's actually for sauce. I had no idea. Yeah. This according to our ketchup expert Andrew F. Smith. All right, well, I don't mean this is a slam against British food, but if you are sometimes going to be consuming i don't know, say largely bland foods in your diet, sauces

are clearly going to become pretty popular. Yeah. Yeah, and uh. He points out that in Robert may five book The Accomplished Cook, Uh, the author list thirteen sauce categories, and each of those sauce categories can contain upwards of a dozen different sauces that you can make to say, put

on your mutton. Yeah. Now, I don't know how this lines up historically with the French sauce tradition, but obviously that's a huge thing as well, Like you know, the French have all these uh, French high cuisine has this whole family system of sauces, like sauces that you make, and then the sauces that are derived from those sauces, the mother sauces, and the sauces you make out of them. For example, you might make like a French brown sauce,

and then from that can be derived these vinegar based changes. Uh. It's very complex. So that's the the European theater roughly. But then also, of course, you know, across across the continent, across eur Asia, you have different traditions going on. Um. Assalted and fermented fish sauces are an ancient part of Southeast Asia and as well, and you know they're they're too,

were numerous and varied in their flavor and consistency. For instance, in in China, the soybean was domesticated uh by roughly b c. E. And eventually soy sauce springs from this, one of the great sauces of of human creation, the

ultimate savory condiment. Yeah, and then uh, you know, eventually the Western and Eastern kingdoms of the sauce eventually meet and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, British and European sailors were introduced to and impressed by the various soy and fish sauces and sauces that they inevitably didn't even really know, you know, what the ingredients were. They just knew that when you put it on food, it was amazing.

And they no doubt, Um, you know, we're enthralled by the possibility of bringing these sauces back to to spice up things at home that we're either bland or had grown bland to their now you know, excited palate and uh and yeah, So they encountered these things on their voyages. Smith writes, quote from this culinary crucible assaulted pickled and fermented foods from ancient Europe and exotic Southeast Asia. British

ketchup materialized during the eighteenth century. All Right, it's time to take a Breakpool will be right back with more on the history of ketchup. Alright, we're back, Okay, Joe who invented the ketchup? Was it Sir Carmichael Ketchup? Was it? Was it Baron von ketch Up? There have been names proposed by various food historians over the years. But these these proposals are definitely wrong, Like we just know for a fact, like we don't know the inventor of the

original ketchup. But as we've been explaining someone, the quest chin of Ketchups inventors fraught anyway, because the sauce has evolved so much over time. So where do you put the inventor? Ketchup seems to be a long lineage of copies of copies of types of sauces, and so the origins of Ketchup bear very little resemblance to the sauce that's sold under that name in most of the world today. But nevertheless, we will do our best to trace the

origins of how that sauce came to be. So when you think about the characteristics of Ketchup, uh, Andrew F.

Smith points this out, and I think he's correct. You try to think of the three main characteristics of ketchup, but you'd probably think that it's something that's thick, something that is sweet, and something that is made from tomatoes, right, yes, and of course also just vitally red like so red that that it often in our comedies and uh, you know cartoons, it is a substitute for human blood yes, uh, and so the origins of ketchup possessed probably none of

these qualities at all. Not made from tomatoes, not sweet, not thick, not read uh. And so. In his book in In Pure Ketchup and f Smith relays a number of competing theories about the origins of ketchup, most of which we now know are almost definitely wrong. A lot of the older origin stories lie in Europe, like, for example, that ketchup comes from the English word cavitch, which is

a type of fish pickled in vinegar. This and the idea that this is a cognate for the French term escovich a, which means like food and sauce for the Spanish escabech a uh, this theory is now considered incorrect. It seems generally agreed that ketchup, as we were saying before the break, comes from some kind of tradition of Asian cuisine. But while that's pretty well established, it gets

harder to pin down in more definite ways. In eighteen seventy seven, somebody named Nas Dallas speculated that the word ketchup comes from a Japanese word keep job k I t j A P. However, this does not seem to be an act rule Japanese word or even a possible Japanese word, that that formation does not come together in Japanese syllables um. It's also been speculated to have come from a Melee word k E C A P. I'm not sure how that would have been pronounced. Maybe catch up, However,

this also seems unlikely. I think among food historians, the favorite theory now, as originally put forth by the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary UH, seems to be that the English word ketchup has Chinese origins, and that it really comes from Kate's yap quote, a word from the Amoy dialect of Chinese meaning the brine of pickled fish. So this would give it a fish origin, though I've

seen other origins on mission. In a second Smith notes that an ethnologist named Terry En de la Cooperie has argued that while the word is Chinese, it does not appear to have come from the Chinese mainland, and that the scholar thinks it more likely emerged from Chinese speakers living swhere in Southeast Asia, such as in Vietnam, and that the British probably first came into contact with this sauce and the name of this sauce somewhere in what

is today Indonesia. Now, I was also reading about the origins of ketchup from the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, and that's from O U P edited by Bruce Craig. From the editors there. Oh, also I should say that the entry is by Andrew F. Smith, yet again apparently just seems to be the ketchup master.

But this entry is more recent than his book, so I would imagine it incorporates, you know, more recent sources and scholarship on that the editors here and Smith seemed to still be going with the idea of the Chinese language origin story for the term ketchup. They think it comes from Kate's Yap and it would refer to a savory fermented sauce here though they say not made out of fish, but made out of soybeans. Um So, I'm

not sure. There seemed to be these competing theories about whether this sauce would have been fish based or soybean based, or maybe both, but there does seem to be general agreement that this was some kind of very ummi rich savory kind of sauce and fermented soybeans in salt or brian provide a fantastic savory flavor in many forms. We've talked about fish based sauces like garam or whatever, but

but soybean based sauces are amazing. Of course, soy sauce, the ultimate savory condiment, is brewed with soybeans and usually some kind of roasted grain. But that's not the only one. You've also got, for example, miso in Japanese cuisine, which is a seasoning, often in the paste form, that gets made from fermented soybeans and other varying ingredients like cochi.

You know this reminds me. You know, you occasionally see sort of you know, loose time travel arguments where someone will say, hey, if you were able to bring back, you know, six machine guns in a time machine and go back to the ancient Rome, could you conquer the

Roman Empire? I think of even more interesting question is if you were to bring back like a single um uh pattie of spices and sauces from say your local Vietnamese restaurants or or Thai restaurant, could you conquer Yeah, any empire of the British Empire, or certainly the Roman Empire. The Romans were big foodies. They were all about exploring new flavors. But if you were to present them with this, uh, would you have the upper hand at least until you

ran out anyway? Yeah, maybe instead you should bring like a soy sauce brewery along with you, a few a

few recipes, secret recipes in code. Yeah. So Smith writes anyway, that the British colonists and traders would have come into contact with sauces of these kinds, either maybe while in China or as we were saying earlier, maybe more likely somewhere in Indonesia, and then they tried to duplicate the flavor once they came back home, but without access to the crucial ingredient, at least in one branch of this

theory of soybeans. Yeah, I love the idea that they've they've brought there, this this precious sauce back with them and they've used it up. They've you know, they've they've they've they've beat on the butt of the bottle, they've they've they've they've they've used their knife to get as much out as possible. They they've added hot water and shaking it up and then poured the remnants onto their food.

But now they are out and they must try somehow to create it again with the limited resources that they have. So it's like people doing the copycat recipes the same way. Today you'll find somebody with a blog who's like, here's my uh, here's my Chick fil a chicken sandwich recipe. You know, they make it home instead of going there.

That's what they would do with this sauce. And another one of the reasons I was thinking about this origin in Southeast Asian and Indonesia is you mentioned earlier that not Geo article by Jasmine Wiggins that it cites as an example of an early ketchup recipe in English, a recipe published by an author named Richard Bradley in seventeen thirty two for something called Ketchup in Haste, which said that the sauce came from quote bin cooling in the

East Indies. And I think this must be referring to an area of the of British bin cooling, which is spelled differently than it is here in this citation, but it would have been pronounced the same. I guess, and it's this coastal region of Sumatra around the area of today's Bengkulu City, which is of course in the country of Indonesia. But anyway, wherever this comes from, it's somewhere over there, and the British bring it back to Britain

and they've they've tasted this awesome savory sauce. It's got this salty mommy punch. Maybe it's made out of fish, maybe it's made out of soybeans, maybe both, but they want to eat it again when they're back home. Like you said, they've emptied out the bottle. It's all gone, and and you lack a crucial ingredient perhaps maybe you know you or you don't know what the crucial ingredients are,

so you just try to do this copycat. So the British traditions actually have plenty of alternative ummmy bomb ingredients that they could substitute to try to recreate this flavor. One, for example, would be and chovies, another would be oysters, another would be mushrooms. Mushrooms are a great umammy rich savory ingredient. If you know you want to boost that kind of flavor in something, tryading dried mushrooms to it. I've also read that they tried kidney beans and walnuts,

though that's weird. I've never thought of kidney beans or walnuts as ummmy rich in flavor, but may mean I don't think of them, right, Yeah, And so they used all of these ingredients in their various British ketchups. Wiggins also points out that Jane Austin, they acclaimed author, is said to have been a big fan of mushroom ketchup

in particular. Uh, but again, most of these ketchups are thin and dark, so dismiss any notions of Jane Austen nimbly snacking on French fries and bright red ketchup right, No, yeah, and probably would have been something closer to like Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce, or maybe the English condiment known as brown sauce. You know about brown sauce, Robbert And now it's like a gravy. Is that what? Because that's what I'm imagining. It's kind of like a poutine, uh,

you know, gravy. No, I mean it's like a type of bottled sauce. I mean, actually, I think technically within the bounds of what we're talking about historically today, it sort of is a ketchup. It's not tomato based. It's English brown sauce. There's this brand, I think it's called Daddy's Favorite Sauce. It's kind of weird. I think there's also HP sauce that might sort of be a brown sauce. It's sort of a a tart, savory, fermented kind of sauce.

It's brown in color, it's got vinegar, it's got spices, um, and people put it on, you know, breakfast, like on your your full English breakfast daigs and sausage, and I've had it, but I have seen brown sauce mentioned. So basically, I think brown sauces in line with what would have

been considered ketchup at this time. By the way, it's speaking of French fries, I do want to point out that while Jane Austin would not have been having bright red tomato ketchup, she could have possibly had French fries because Thomas Jefferson was serving them at the White House

at roughly the same time. Yeah, or something that was referred to as potatoes served in the French manner, which some commentators have taken to be French franc I mean essentially, uh, you know, there's French fries are a simple concept, um, and then once you've had them, you will you want to serve them at the highest levels of government. So I would love to see a restaurant titled Jane Austin's House of Traditional English Ketchups and potatoes serus in the

French manner. Why does something sound kind of sinister about that potatoes served in the French manner? Yeah, it sounds you know, potentially um infectious taboo. You know. So I hear you like potatoes, but do you like potatoes in the French manner? Done? Okay, well we're still so here.

We've got various things that are referred to as ketchups in British cuisine, derived probably from original savory sauces in Asian cuisine, made out of all kinds of different stuff, mushrooms, oysters and chovies, walnuts, beans, and so how do we get from that to the the ketchup that we were talking about at the beginning of the episode as being considered synonymous with American food, you know, American fast food especially well, so British colonists brought their interpretations of ketchup

with them to America, where the recipe experiments, of course continued over the years. It didn't just stop evolving there. In Smith notes that beans and apples were tried out as major ingredients of ketchup um And of course we got to get to the tomato somehow. And here the line of connection is getting a lot clearer, because the tomato is a new World berry originally cultivated by the

native peoples of Central and South America. And the tomato is also like anchovies, like mushrooms, like the fermented soybeans, rich in savory umami flavors. So already we can see ketchup as a true product of internet sational trade inspired by Asian culinary traditions interpreted by Europeans using the natural bounty of the America's. Yeah, and I think it's not surprising at all that you start to see tomatoes showing up as a main ingredient and ketchup recipes in the

United States in the early eighteen hundreds. For example, an early published recipe for tomato ketchup, maybe the earliest one, was written by the American horticulturists and scientist James Mice who was living in Philadelphia in the year eighteen twelve, and Mice referred to tomatoes in this recipe as love apples, which is a term from the French the palm de more apparently the apple of love, which is interesting to me because it's parallel to the French term for potatoes

palmed to tear the or the apples of the earth. And that makes me wonder, are there other French phrases of the just anything that was previously unfamiliar in the language is apples of something like Well, especially with the tomato, it makes sense, right, You're suddenly presented with this new food food. What's your frame of reference for something that looks like this? You might turn to the apple and say, oh,

it's this. It's this strange apple that came from from the New World, and it's a it's a it has a totally different flavor profile. Let's start cooking with it. Of course, then again, I think also in Italian tomatoes pomadoo, and I think the origin of that is the is golden apple. Yeah, but I do love that the apple of love when you have a really good tomato, I believe that title is appropriate. Oh absolutely, But what what

would the French word for peppers be. Pepper is also a new world uh crop and genus that brought over the capsicum? Would it be apple? Apples of burning? Anyway, miss recipe for catchup involved a tomato pulp base, and brandy, but did not include common ingredients you'd find today like vinegar or sugar. Now, of course, tomatoes naturally have both sweetness and acidity, but sugar and vinegar I think are used to boost those natural qualities and also for their

preservative hours. And also, just to be perfectly clear, Messa's recipe here would not have been the first tomato based sauce by a long shot. I mean people were using tomatoes and sauces. It would just be one of the first known times that tomato becomes the backbone of a sauce that people are calling ketchup right, because I think this is more of a modern thing. But I've when when you have like alleged pizza sauce um an alleged pasta sauce from like a very like fast food oriented

Italian restaurant. I will not name names, but sometimes they are provided here in the office, and uh, and I tasted and I'm like this is essentially catch up. This is not pasta sauce. This is not uh, this is this is nothing like spaghetti sauce. This is essentially catch up. Nothing says the old Country like noodles boiled for twenty five minutes and ketchup and lots of cheese. So at this point the stage is set for for for what is largely the next phase of food preparation, and that

industrial food preparation. Of preparation, Yeah, exactly so. Throughout the nineteenth century, industrial food production and packaging increased, UH, And there were multiple types of ketchup sold throughout the United States at this point, especially after the Civil War, and at this point tomato ketchup was still only one of these major varieties of ketchup. But by the end of the nineteenth century, I think at this point the conquest of tomato ketchup was complete. So it sort of happened

over the course of the eighteen hundreds. Uh. The conquest was complete in a couple of ways, both in terms of becoming the primary variety of ketchup found on tables and kitchens was now tomato ketchup, but also in surpassing other condiments and sauces in popularity in general, and Smith notes that in eighteen nine, an article in the New York Tribune called tomato ketchup America's national condiment and referred to the fact that it was found quote on every

table in the land. So it sounds like by the turn of the twentieth century, tomato ketchup had reached a level of popularity close to what it enjoys today in the United States, but how it was used at the time I think was somewhat different. Smith reports that, in line with its traditionally uses up through the turn of the twentieth century, the main uses for tomato ketchup included, quote as an ingredient for savory pies and sauces, and

to enhance the flavor of meat, poultry, and fish. So I think it's more the idea that if your chicken is bland, you boost the flavor with some ummmy rich tomato ketchup. Or if your gravy is weak, you get some ketchup in there and the gravy and it will sort of boost the flavor a bit. If your weenies are lacking, you just add ketchup and grape jelly and cook him up. In a crock pot. What are you talking about? Like, that's like that's cocktail leenies, right? That

really like the rape jelly. I didn't know that that was I believe that's the recipe. I remember seeing um and sort of being horrified by it. Seems like you'd want more ingredients in your your cocktail wheeny sauce. Well, do you know about curry? Worse? This German food that's it's basically little sausages cut up in catch up with curry powder. That's that's basically it. And this is something you make or something you purchase in a camp. I

think it's like a German kind of fast food. I don't want to slander German cuisine, but well, I mean curry has is certainly another one of those flavors, flavor profiles that has conquered the world, becoming of basically curries, uh have become an essential part of English cuisine. Curries have become a very popular part of modern Japanese cuisine. Uh and and curry can be found, you know, throughout the United States in various cuisines. So you go into

a traditional English chip shop, you'll find it. You know, you can get the tartar sauce, or you can get the curry sauce and a lot of them. So basically what you're getting at, though, is that the use of ketchup at the time was was more as as a catch all sauce and ingredients sauce. Yeah. Uh, And so I think it was later in the twentieth since that ketch up became most associated with what Smith calls it's

three major host food. Can you guess what these are? Well, we've already touched on French fries, right and um, I mean the other big one that comes to mind is, of course the fast food hamburger. Of course, there you go, that makes sense. Of course. The third one is the hot dog. This is controversial, and on one hand, I don't want to be that jerk that tells other people what to eat or how to eat, except right now.

I always get that feeling about this one topic in particular, which is that if you're gonna eat a hot dog, hot dog has a very natural, heavenly soul mate and that soul made is mustard. Ketch Up on hot dogs seems like a strange betrayal to me. Yeah, well, I don't, I don't. I don't have a real firm opinion. When I have a veggie dog these days, I tend to have mustard. Yeah, I tend to put sauer Kraud on it.

Souer Krowd's a great choice. And I also like a little horse radish That seems stranger, but I'd be willing to try that. I've gotten to where I like horse radish on just about anything, like it's a good uh, it's a good good way to like spice it up and make sure I get that that blasting moment like like what I kind of poisoned myself where I don't know which bite it's going to be, but I know one of the bites I take of this veggie dog is going to make me go blind for a second. Well,

I like that. I like the sound of that. Also, though, have you ever had horse radish on smoked fish based spreads, like on a like a smoked trout or or or like a baked salmon kind of spread. I don't know that I have. I mean, obviously I've had like the wasabi uh in in sushi, which you know that that's an example of the horse radish e type flavor going you know super well with with with fish flavors, so

I imagine it would be amazing. It's very good. The local restaurant here in town, the General Mirror, is kind of like a New York Deli style place. They do like a baked salmon spread with horse radish on tops. Delicious. Speaking of putting sauer Kraut on dogs, though, I bet other traditions that are similar to Sauer Kraut, I would say kimchi would be amazing. A hot dog, absolutely, yeah,

kim chee is good on everything. But anyway, I guess one thing that we should realize from this history is that if there's one feature we most often think of as necessary for Ketchup, it probably is that it's a tomato based sauce. And this is just historically not the case. Uh. It's tomato based. Ketchup is a particularly popular variety of ketchup that achieved dominance over time. Now, we were already alluding to them earlier, but when you talk about Ketchup,

you've got to talk about one big brand name, right. Uh. There're originally tons of different producers of Ketchup in general, and Tomato Ketchup specifically in the United States and in Britain. But in the early twentieth century, one company established itself as sort of the big troll in the arena, you know, the dominant player in tomato ketchup manufacturing and sales, and

of course that was the Hines Company, Right. Yeah, this is one of those situations where you might think, oh, well, we just think of Hines because they're the mature company today. But you know, it's like, it's impossible to separate the history of ketchup from the separate from the history of Hines.

Um Historian Gabriella Patrick points out that during the eighteen hundreds, when Hines, uh, the Hines Company, you know, came to life, ketchup was made out of all the aforementioned ingredients, uh, you know, from the the anchovies to the mushrooms, but also grapes. That was an additional ingredient they included here. Uh she included here. So it's it's you know, also important to note that up until until Hines, this was not something you just, you know, exclusively boughted a store.

Ketch Up was something that was also just made in the home and it you know, and it was no matter what the ingredients generally more of a watery substance. You know, this, this idea of like the thick catchup is is largely a product of of Hines and and we can largely look to Hines as the as the originator of this characteristic and they would go on to make a big deal about that thickness. I want to

talk about that in a bit. So Hines focused in on tomato, sauce, sugar, vinegar, and spices, and then they made it thick. They made it as thick as you're probably accustomed to, thick in a way that it wasn't made in the home, and thick in a way that certainly lends itself to certain usages h that you know, you wouldn't be able to get out of just you know, this watery substance. Yeah, it would be less appealing probably to say squired on top of a hot dog like

it's watery. It would just kind of like soak into the bun maybe, but yeah, or to or to dip fries in for that matter. Um So it's J. Hines company had existed for decades and they've been selling tomato ketchup since eighteen seventy three, and Hines remained the largest producer of ketchup throughout the twentieth century, it was flanked

by competitors like Hunts and del Monte. One interesting historical intersection, I thought is between the Hinz Company and a book that I was talking about in our summer reading episode of Stuff to Blew Your Mind recently, uh and that that concerns the push for pure food and drug laws in the United States by the chemist Harvey Washington Wiley

and others. Uh So, in nineteen o six, when the U. S Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, a lot of industrial food producers would have been using preservatives like formaldehyde and borax and stuff stuff that that Wiley

was very against. And one major beneficiary of this act apparently was hind Since I was reading a New York Times article that mentions that they had a method to sterilize and bottle ketchup at scale without the use of toxic preservatives, and because they already had this method at a plant, I believe it was in Pennsylvania, um that

they benefited from the passage of this law. All Right, on that note, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we will continue our discussion of what is essentially the modern history of ketch up. All right, we're act So we've been talking about how in a way, tomato ketchup is already something that has a global culinary history. It came from Asian cuisine originally, and then was something that British cooks tried to recreate

and then spread to America had tomatoes incorporated. But today tomato ketchup is not just a regional favorite condiment. It is a huge global manufacturing success. It spread to countries all over the world, especially alongside fast food franchises. And Andrew F. Smith notes that as of Americans purchased ten billion ounces of ketchup every year, which works out to about three full bottles for every person in the country.

That's a lot of ketchup. That is that that is that's more than my household be well, that's that's more than my households, you know, purchase of ketchup bottles. But I don't know when you start looking at ketchup consumed elsewhere, maybe and maybe it is accurate, I'm not sure. Yeah, for for the whole world and not just a mirror a sales top eight hundred and forty million fourteen ounce

bottles a year. Uh. The Hinz company alone claims that they sell six hundred and fifty million bottles of Ketchup a year. And they also claim, in addition to that, to sell eleven billion single serve plastic packets of Ketchup every year. That means about one point five Ketchup packets per human on Earth. Now, another fact about Hinz Ketchup specifically, we're all familiar with the Hinz Ketchup bottle, the glass

bottle that's on the table at the restaurant. If you've ever fought the battle of reology against the slow pouring Ketchup stuck up in a in a glass Hines bottle. Apparently we were alluding to this earlier. The slow poor of Hinz Ketchup is something Hinz used to specifically boast about in ads for their product, resting on the logic that a thick, slow pouring Ketchup was you know, it's

higher quality. It means it's made for more tomatoes. The interesting I could see how that messaging would stick to the you know the variance of the thick Ketchup. I mean, they've really got ads about it. I've got a link to one in here that's an old TV out of there is that's got this like jazz music playing, and they say, like for the slow poor I don't know if they were, like, were there fast pouring ketchups at

the time that just didn't make the cut over. I'm guessing like your watery or ketchups, you know, the more essentially more traditional ketchups are coming out as a as a water um or also maybe it's a I wonder if there were cases where restaurants were cutting their ketch up with water. Yeah, that could be true. I wonder if some still do that. But so there was a claim made directly by the Hinz company that I found recently that they apparently still enforced slow poor is one

of the quality control metrics of their ketchup. Quote ketchup exits the iconic glass bottle at point zero to eight miles per hour. If the viscosity of the ketchup is greater than the speed, the ketchup is rejected for sale. So this excited to about two point four six ft per minute or about one point to five centimeters per second. So they claim they reject a batch if it flows faster than that, but what if it flows slower? Also,

at what temperature? So many reeology questions about Ketchup. Well, I I I imagine these are insider details that that the ketchup testers would be privy to. But here's the thing. What happens and we've all had this experience or well, I don't know if everyone does, because now we have so many score bottles of Ketchup, But I I feel like a lot of that that experience where you're trying to get the catchup out of the bottle and it

won't come out. What are you supposed to do? Yeah, Hines claims, if you're trying to get the ketchup out of the glass bottle and it's stuck, the best method to get it flowing is to apply a firm tap to the spot on the neck of the bottle where

there's there was a number fifty seven embossed on the glass. Now, I was looking at an article here that that also deals with the the the inside business of ketchup production at hinz uh npr is All things considered ran a great story just earlier this year titled Meet the Man who Guards America America's Ketchup by by Dan Charles. He's like the Night at the end of the last crusade.

You know who's their stint is I have waited for you to come and take the ketchup recipe, but you must be worthy, yes, And that that individual is uh kraft Heinz ketchup Master. That's his title, Hector azorn No and that's what that's who. The story deals with profiles and it's a wonderful look at the modern state of ketchup. In Hinds global approach to catch up, um so as No points out that their ketchups taste has remained constant.

The Hinds taste has remained constant, but the exact recipe differs from market to market and this becomes This became an issue a few years ago, apparently, as they had to come up with a recipe to satisfy all of Europe, despite the fact that Germans prefer a ketchup with more of a vinegary taste and the British prefer of hip

with more of a spicy taste. And while uh osor No doesn't spill any secrets, he points out that the American recipe had to change at one point in the recent past to reflect shifts in well, he's not very specific shifts in flavor, shifts in ingredients. Yeah, it sounds like there was a recipe change in order to course correct after some unintended shift in flavor of the American version over time. And I wonder what that would be.

I mean, if they weren't changing the ingredients, but the flavor of the ketchup was changing, I would have to think that would be due to the changing flavor of the tomatoes that were going into it, because you wouldn't expect like the vinegar or the sugar or anything to be changing flavor. Yeah, and tomato crops are certainly susceptible to a number of factors, and ultimately their flavor is is subject to these factors, and then includes emerging diseases,

nitrogen rates, and of course climate. And then you have post harvest decisions as well regarding storage and transport that could contentially factor into it. I mean, it's it's easy to think about the simplicity of Ketchup, but it's certainly when you're talking about a massive company creating Ketchup for the world, that is a complex operation with a lot of moving parts. And and so it's no surprise that

Hines really impacted American commercial agriculture and food processing in general. Uh, there's a there's an article on smithsonian dot com from by Amy Bentley titled how ketchup revolutionized how food has grown, processed, and regulated from and I want to read a quick quote from it. Quote Innovations and tomato breeding and mechanical harvester technologies, driven in part by demand for the condiment,

helped define modern industrial agriculture. In the nineteen sixties. You see, data scientists developed a mechanical tomato harvester around the same time, plant geneticists perfected a tomato with a thick skin and a round shape that could withstand machine harvesting and truck transport. This new tomato was arguably short on taste, but the perfect storm of breeding and harvesting technology from which it emerged allowed for a steady supply of tomatoes that kept

bottlers and canners and business. Nearly all of the tomatoes produced for sauces and ketchup are products of this moment, as are many other fruits and vegetables produced in the US. So think about that. The invention of Hinds tomato ketchup by food scientists lead to essentially the reinvention of the

tomato itself. Yeah, and you see this come through. I mean, have you ever wondered why if you get a tomato with the grocery store it tastes nothing like a really amazing heirloom tomato grown in a garden or by you know, by a small farmer or something like. The garden tomato has so much more flavor. It's it's unbelievable the difference. And I think a lot of that has to do with facts about what kinds of you know, what is selected for when you're creating a grocery store tomato, which

is probably similar to and in streel tomato. It's tomatoes that have to be able to survive the harvesting and transport process and then be appealing in whatever form they're they're sold. And so, for example, like tomatoes you buy the grocery store are probably a big thing that's being selected for in the breeding process. Is just them not

getting crushed in being harvested in shipped to the store. Yeah, So if you have given up on tomatoes, you think you don't like tomatoes, and you're basing that mostly on grocery store tomatoes, then you really should try. You have you know, you have the opportunity to, you know, try an heirloom tomato, try a farmer's market tomato and uh and and see if that doesn't give you something a

little different. I will say, also a very good compromise if you you know, a lot of people don't have they can't make it out to the farmer's market, or it's not the right time of year or whatever. If you're looking for a compromise, try cherry tomatoes, a little grape tomatoes. I think those tend to be the best variety of tomato that you can get at a large scale grocery store. So, speaking of grocery stores today, hind cells about seventy of America's ketchup and yes the product

is largely a monolith. But but they and other ketchup makers have shaken things up. They've experimented with new concepts, and a big part of this is that the very international world that catch Up emerged from has kind of come back to challenge it in some ways. Um, you know, they're you know and in some cases that these products are very ketch up like in their profile. I mean, consider a Blessed Siracha sauce or holy uh gocha jong sauce the Korean ketchup like sauce. I love guchu jong.

I love it. Yes, it's it's it's so good. I've been using it. And I started off, of course, just using it, you know, like on a beben bob kind of a bowl, But now I keep using it on things that, uh, that are not even necessarily Korean, just because it's just it's so good and and it is kind of like Korean catchup. In fact, if you do an Amazon search for quote Korean catchup, you will bring up tons of goguchan uh and as well as a

sponsored hynds at at the very top. You know, here, here's one good thing you can make in your home. If you want something really exciting to dip your tater tots in or whatever, just make yourself some go chu jong mannaise. Yeah, mix it up together. And then there are also changes to what you know and what we

want out of ingredients in our processed foods. So I feel like when I was a kid, you know, you're pretty much guaranteed that your your hinds catch up or your any kind of catchup you would buy off the shelf was probably gonna have high fruit dose, corns are up in it, and uh, you know, the consumer demands have shifted in many ways away from that. So just a qui quick glance at high at the Hinds website, you'll see that they have a number of varieties available.

You can get your no salt added, you know, sugar added, you're organic, you're simply catch up, which is a no GMO ingredients, no high fruits, corns or version of the product. They have a honey and reduced sugar sweetened version. They have an added veggie version that is percent added veggies they claim with carrots and butternut squash um, which is in right, getting away from the idea of just tomatoes,

will be sneaking some other vegetables in there. And then they also have hot and spicy jalapeno and siracha tomato ketchup? Do they make one out of oysters and walnuts and mushrooms? Not yet, but who knows, you know, maybe like the Heinz Britain will be will be the next big brand and school ketchup. Yeah, and then of course there are those ketchup slices we mentioned earlier. I'm sorry, I shouldn't, hey, I'm sure they're fine. I would try I have just

had not I've not had the opportunity to try one. Now. In terms of the future of Ketchup, well, I mean it's hard to predict everything with ketchup. I mean, look at the robot catchers see cyborg catchip, nano ketch failing. Yeah. Well, we've already taken ketchup, as well as mustard in various other condiments into space, uh, into you know, lo g environments, orbital environments and uh and it really makes sense because

it takes salt and pepper. For instance, you can have salt and pepper on your food in space, but it has to be in the liquid form. You can't have a you can't have a grind your own pepper and space. Yeah, it would be it would be a risk to the environment, you know, to the machinery. You might never have thought about this as one of the weird things about eating food in space, but food does not fall in space. So like, you can't put something on your food by

like just dumping it out on top liquids. You have to get them to adhere to your food if you want them to stick. And therefore a thick catchup is ideal for a log or zero G environment. I mean in a in a sense, catch up uh was destined to go into space. It foretold space travel in sum respects. So it's it's reasonable to assume ketchup will continue to follow us into space and to other planets even and

to flavor the spice milage. Yeah, However, here on Earth, Uh, you know, we're dealing with challenges here, you know, different challenges, you know, but challenges such as a changing climate warming Earth, and so companies like hinzuh and and and other and really have any major agricultural group or having to turn to sustainability efforts to deal with it. And then there and then their additional sustainability efforts that uh, that others

are urging them to take on. I was looking at how climate change is impacting an American icon hines Ketchup, which was from Harvard Business Schools HBS Digital Initiative from and basically it discusses how ketchup depends on tomatoes, and tomatoes are subject to crop shortages and uh the resulting increased costs as well as the challenges of decreased water availability.

So basically they point out, yeah, Companies like Hins have a number of sustainable sustainability initiatives already in place, and they can stand to uh take a few more, uh in order to safeguard the world's you know, catch up reserves for a future that is going to deal with, you know, a rapidly changing climate. I can imagine global

catch up shortages having uh profound negative effects. Yeah. Now in terms of flavor, though, I don't know, it's kind of kind we already see, uh, you know, a diversification of ketchup to a certain extent. You know, I mentioned the examples from the Hinds website, So I don't know. Maybe we'll see, Maybe we'll see you know, more savory catchups, maybe return of more vinegar based catch ups. Maybe those

will become more trendy. Let's see what's gonna be made more abundant climate change, Maybe algae algae based catch up. But also another thing to keep in mind is if if we're talking about like changes in you know, the foods that we have available to ourselves as we're forced to consider, say more insect based protein sources, like that sounds like a place for ketchup if you ask me, you know, um, well, in in getting picky kids used to new foods. They they say, ketchup can be helpful.

And so maybe if the adults of America are the picky kids you're trying to get used to intom feje uh, ketchup could play a role there. Yeah, I mean thinking if you're if you're if I say in the future, we're gonna have to eat more bugs, and you think, oh, well, then let me rephrase that in the future, we'll have to eat more bugs with ketchup. In the future there will be various protein based shapes that you can dip in ketchup. Yeah, I mean that sounds fine. I mean

that's basically what we have now at most. This is always my argument for um, certainly imitation meats, but also for insect based protein uh substances, is that we already have a situation where the meat has a very ambiguous flavor, if it even has a flavor at all, and then we're depending so heavily on the fact that it's fried, on the fact that it's then dipped and catch up or you know, some other sauce but probably catch up.

Then you know, why why not have a more sustainable substance at the heart of that why does the why is the burger? And then many of these cases need to be made from a cow, given the environmental costs all of that cow, when it could be it could be anything, because the burger, the fast food burger, just really does not depend upon the flavor of the patty. Say hello to the cricket, Big Mac. Yeah. And really this gets back to the the the ancient history of

the sauce. Thinking of the sauce not so much as this luxury, as this thing that makes a nice thing nicer, but perhaps the thing that can make an unpleasant thing edible, you know, or or you know, something that is going to add not just a fun spice, but a necessary spice to life. All right. So there you have it,

the invention of catch up now obvious slee Uh. We'd love to hear from listeners about this episode because most of you have probably had ketchup and uh and and many of you have been exposed to perhaps strange users of ketchup in your own life, or you've traveled around and you've got to try. Maybe you have some experience sampling ketchups in different markets, in different countries. I want to hear from the people who have never had ketchup. I never tried it one right in. I don't know

if that's possible. I would love to hear from that human being. Um, but I will be surprised when we actually hear from them. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Invention, head on over to invention pod dot com. And yeah they're some of these are food based, but we have most for more technology based. Though, as we've discussed here, you cannot discuss the history of food without discussing the history of technology.

Food preparation is a human technology. Food is technology. Is not not technology just because you eat it. Yeah, well, I mean it's the product of technology at least I don't know. Uh, depends how you a part of the terms. But at any rate, we've had a we've had a few food related topics. So we have the episode on shop sticks, of course, on pooping automata, yeah yeah, and I imagine we'll return to do other food based topics

in the future. We did bread and toast. Bread and toast, yes, another key key advancement in human culinary technology, and now we have catch up to put on top of that. Um. But Hey, if you want to support this show, the best thing you can do is make sure you have subscribed, and wherever you get the show, make sure you have rated and reviewed it, because that helps us out as well. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us to let us know feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, to let us know that you've never once tried catchup, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H