I have a good friend who puts ketchup on everything. And when I say everything, I mean it. I’ve watched her pour it all over her tacos and drown her macaroni and cheese in it. I’ve even dined with her in a Chinese restaurant when she’d asked the server for a bottle (sidenote: this created quite a scramble in the kitchen). Look, there’s nothing I like better than dipping my French fries in a pool of ketchup, but Chinese food? No way.
Well, apparently, my friend is more on track than me. Turns out, ketchup was likely invented in ancient China as a fermented fish sauce — though the original sauce, called ge-tchup or keu-chiap, differed vastly from the common table condiment we use today and wasn’t made from tomatoes. As with many Eastern delicacies, ketchup made its way to Europe via traders in the 1600s. There, it was mixed with various ingredients such as mushrooms, nuts, shallots, horse-radish, nutmeg, and even anchovies (yuck). Tomatoes were first incorporated into ketchup in the 18th century, and the modern version we all know and love came into popularity around the 1920s.
Interesting point, tomatoes were considered poisonous because their leaves contain toxic compounds. It wasn’t until the late 1600s when an English physician named John Gerard claimed cooked tomatoes, as opposed to raw ones, were edible. By the mid-1700s, English doctors were claiming tomatoes (or love apples) not only aided in the treatment of digestive and liver-related ailments, they were also an aphrodisiac. Eventually, tomatoes made their way to America where, according to Thomas Jefferson, British doctor John de Sequeyra introduced them to the commonwealth of Virginia. Sequeyra was reputed to say that a person who ate enough of these love apples would never die. Yet one more good reason for my friend to eat ketchup on everything.
Of course, eventually, the medical community came to dispute the tomato’s medical and performance enhancement properties. Tomato pills, which were touted to “cure all your ills”, soon disappeared from grocery store shelves. So where did that leave our ketchup, a.k.a. fish sauce?
Enter Henry John Heinz, who founded the H.J. Heinz Company in 1869. By the late 1800s, glassmakers figured out how to manufacture inexpensive glass flasks. This created a way for food companies to more easily transport their products — products like ketchup. Being a smart entrepreneur, Mr. Heinz saw an opportunity for his thicker, sweeter version, and I don’t think there’s a person in America today who hasn’t at least heard of Heinz ketchup.
So, where does ketchup fit into the old West you ask? Well, like most things, recipes and bottles traveled with pioneers and prospectors and homesteaders, along with tomato seeds and canned tomatoes. As you’d expect, cowboys added their own twist to this favorite table condiment, leaving out the sugar and adding spicy ingredients like peppers and onions. The perfect addition to flavor up a bowl of beans or a T-bone steak.
Sadly, for my friend, ketchup sales have been on the decline with salsa now outselling this former “cure for all your ills”. But don’t tell her. I’m sure she’ll ask for a bottle the next time we go out.
Fun question: are you a ketchup lover and, if yes, what food do you most like to put it on? Like I said earlier, I’m a French fry girl.
How wonderful it would be to have a device that cured every disease!
the skin into the body, of course. People of the era did not understand that oxygen could only enter the body through the lungs.
Guess what else? Dr. Sanche wasn’t really a doctor. He was a businessman who devised a field of medicine called diaduction. He believed that an undercurrent connected all natural organisms, and a disruption of that current created illness. Oxygen, he believed, could restore the disruption of the natural current, thus the Oxydonor. He moved frequently to stay one step ahead of the authorities as the complaints rolled in, but continued to market his device and to warn the general public against imitators.