A Even the most barren of refrigerators has a lingering bottle that clatters with the whoosh of an opened door. It is the hero of American condiments: ketchup. In the U.S., 97 percent of households report having a bottle at the table, but ketchup’s origins are anything but American. Ketchup comes from the Hokkien Chinese word, kê-tsiap, the name of a sauce derived from fermented fish. It is believed that traders brought fish sauce from Vietnam to southeastern China.
B The British likely first encountered ketchup in Southeast Asia, returned home, and tried to replicate the fermented dark sauce. This probably happened in the late 17th and early 18th centuries as evidenced by a recipe published in 1732 for “Ketchup in Paste,” by Richard Bradley.
C But this was certainly not the ketchup we would recognize today. Most British recipes called for ingredients like mushrooms, walnuts, oysters, or anchovies in an effort to reproduce the savory tastes first encountered in Asia. These early ketchups were mostly thin and dark, and were often added to soups, sauces, meat and fish. This recipe changed in 1822, when scientist and horticulturalist, James Mease, who referred to tomatoes as “love apples” created ketchup with tomato pulp, spices, and brandy but lacked vinegar and sugar.
D Ketchup’s success was due in part because it could be kept for up to a year. Still, preservation of tomato ketchups proved challenging. Since tomato-growing season was short, makers of ketchup had to solve the problem of preserving tomato pulp year round.
E Early investigations into commercial ketchup found that it contained potentially unsafe levels of preservatives, namely coal tar, which was sometimes added to achieve the red color, and sodium benzoate, an additive that retarded spoilage. By the end of the 19th Century, benzoates were seen as particularly harmful to health. Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley maintained that the use of these harmful preservatives was unnecessary if high quality ingredients were used and handled properly.
F Wiley partnered with a Pittsburgh man named Henry J. Heinz who had started producing ketchup in 1876. Heinz was also convinced American consumers did not want chemicals in their ketchup. In answer to the benzoate controversy, Heinz developed a recipe that used ripe, red tomatoes and dramatically increased the amount of vinegar to reduce risk of spoilage. Heinz began producing preservative-free ketchup, and soon dominated the market. In 1905, the company had sold five million bottles of ketchup.
G With the rise of commercial ketchup, recipes for the condiment slowly vanished from cookbooks. Home cooks found that homemade ketchup just didn’t taste “right.” This is not surprising. Americans now purchase 10 billion ounces of ketchup annually, which translates to roughly three bottles per person per year.