Ketchup

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(Redirected from Catsup)

This article is about the condiment; for the singers, see Las Ketchup.

Ketchup (or catsup) is a popular condiment, usually made with ripened tomatoes. The basic ingredients in modern ketchup are tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon. Onions, celery, and other vegetables are frequent additions. In the UK, Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, and New Zealand ketchup is commonly referred to as tomato sauce or simply red sauce.

Ketchup has not always been made out of tomatoes. It started out as a general term for sauce, typically made of mushrooms or fish brine with herbs and spices. Mushroom ketchup is still available in some countries, such as the UK. Some popular early main ingredients include anchovy, oyster, lobster, walnut, kidney bean, cucumber, cranberry, lemon, and grape.

The largest major commercial distributors of ketchup in the United States are Red Gold, the H. J. Heinz Company and ConAgra Foods (manufacturer of Hunt's brand).

1 History
- 1.1 A 20th century grape ketchup recipe
- 1.2 Later innovations
2 Nutrition
3 Viscosity
4 Etymology
- 4.1 Early uses in English
- 4.2 The China connection
5 Ketchup and U.S. politics
6 See also
7 External links
- 7.1 Early recipes
- 7.2 Other non-commercial recipes
8 References

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History

The word "ketchup" may have come from the Malay kēchap, a fish sauce that does not contain tomatoes. The Malay word means taste. A more direct origin for the word may be the Cantonese dialect (Chinese) phrase ke-tsiap ( 茄汁 ) which literally means eggplant sauce. The Cantonese phrase for tomato is fan-ke, which means "foreign eggplant".

Ketchup in the 1800s referred to any sauce made with vinegar. As the century progressed, tomato ketchup began its ascent in popularity, influenced by an American enthusiasm for tomatoes.

In the Sugar House Book, published in 1801, a ketchup recipe was given:

Get [the tomatoes] quite ripe on a dry day, squeeze them with your hands till reduced to a pulp, then put half a pound of fine salt to one hundred tomatoes, and boil them for two hours.
Stir them to prevent burning.
While hot press them through a fine sieve, with a silver spoon till nought but the skin remains, then add a little mace, 3 nutmegs, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and pepper to taste.
Boil over a slow fire till quite thick, stir all the time.
Bottle when cold.
One hundred tomatoes will make four or five bottles and keep good for two or three years."

The salt in this recipe, which served as a preservative, yields an extremely salty taste. This recipe is important because tomato was not widely accepted by people in North America in the early 1800s. Many believed it was poisonous.

The Virginia Housewife (1824), an influential 19th-century cookbook written by Mary Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's cousin, also had a tomato ketchup recipe.

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A 20th century grape ketchup recipe

This recipe is taken from The Inglenook Cook Book, published in 1906:

Take 1 quart of grape juice, 1 pint of vinegar, 1 pound of sugar, and ground cloves to suit your taste. Boil until quite thick.

This book also teaches its readers how to make tomato and cucumber ketchup.

Image:Heinz ketchup and mustard121209 2913 sharpened.jpg

Heinz introduced the first commercial ketchup in 1876 which was advertised: "Blessed relief for Brother and the other men in the household!"

The Webster's Dictionary of 1913 defined "catchup" as a "table sauce made from mushrooms, tomatoes, walnuts, etc. [Written also ketchup]."

Modern ketchup emerged in the early years of the 20th century, out of a debate over the use of sodium benzoate as a preservative in condiments <ref>http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html</ref>. Harvey W. Wiley, the "father" of the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S., challenged the safety of benzoate. In response, entrepreneurs, particularly Henry J. Heinz, pursued an alternative recipe that eliminated the need for that preservative.

Prior to Heinz (and his fellow innovators), commercial tomato ketchups of that time were watery and thin, in part due to the use of unripe tomatoes, which were low in pectin. They were also less vinegary than modern ketchups; by pickling ripe tomatoes, the need for benzoate was eliminated without spoilage or degradation in flavor. But the changes driven by the desire to eliminate benzoate also produced changes that some experts (such as Andrew F. Smith <ref>http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f01/smith.html</ref>) believe were key to the establishment of tomato ketchup as the dominant American condiment.

Until Heinz, most commercial ketchups appealed to two of the basic tastes: bitterness and saltiness. But the switch to ripe tomatoes and more tomato solids added savoriness, and the major increase in the concentration of vinegar added sourness and pungency to the range of sensations experienced during its consumption. And because the elimination of benzoate was also accompanied by a doubling of the sweetness of ketchup, a balanced stimulation of all five types of taste buds produced an almost gestalt effect.

In the past, ketchup was produced from fresh tomatoes after harvesting. Vacuum evaporation made it possible to turn tomatoes into a very thick tomato paste that is easy to store at room temperature. This enables a factory to produce ketchup throughout the year.

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Later innovations

Originally, ketchup was stored in glass bottles and was difficult to pour. While glass containers protected ketchup from moisture and oxidization, the physical properties of ketchup make it difficult to pour smoothly from a glass bottle. Without vigorous shaking, ketchup tends to stick to the inside of the bottle. Physicists explain this by noting that ketchup is a dilatant power-law fluid. The introduction of polyethylene squeeze bottles made it easier to get the ketchup out. Today, glass ketchup bottles are seldom seen outside restaurants, as the plastic squeeze bottles are overwhelmingly more popular with consumers.

Since 2000, Heinz has marketed colored ketchup products. These popular products are made from adding food coloring to the traditional ketchup. Its introduction, in smaller soft plastic squeeze bottles <ref>http://www.ezsquirt.com/</ref>, has led to a 12% increase as of 2004 in ketchup consumption in homes with children <ref>http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html</ref>. These products (as of January 2006) have been discontinued.

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Nutrition

The following table compares the nutritional value of ketchup with raw ripe tomatoes and salsa, based on information from the USDA Food Nutrient Database.

Nutrient (per 100 g)	Ketchup	Low sodium Ketchup	Tomatoes, year-round	USDA commodity salsa	La Victoria Salsa Brava, Hot
Energy	100 kcal 419 kJ	104 kcal 435 kJ	18 kcal 75 kJ	36 kcal 150 kJ	40 kcal 170 kJ
Water	68.33 g	66.58 g	94.50 g	89.70 g	88.67 g
Protein	1.74 g	1.52 g	0.88 g	1.50 g	1.36 g
Fats	0.49 g	0.36 g	0.20 g	0.20 g	1.11 g
Carbohydrates	25.78 g	27.28g	3.92 g	7.00 g	6.16 g
Sodium	1110 mg	20 mg	5 mg	430 mg	648 mg
Vitamin C	15.1 mg	15.1 mg	12.7 mg	4 mg	7.2 mg
Lycopene	17.0 mg	19.0 mg	2.6 mg	n/a	n/a

Ketchup packets from fast-food restaurants:

Restaurant	Packet size	Energy	Sodium	Carbo- hydrates
Arby's	9 g	10 kcal (42 kJ)	100 mg	2 g
Burger King	10 g	10 kcal (42 kJ)	127 mg	3 g
Jack in the Box	9 g	10 kcal (42 kJ)	105 mg	2 g

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Viscosity

Ketchup (the tomato variety) is a thixotropic substance, which often results in difficulties of removing it from the glass bottles that much ketchup is distributed in.

The "common" method (inverting the bottle and tapping the bottom (now at the top)) will often cause the ketchup to suddenly gain enough momentum to begin flowing, and due to the sheer stress on a thixotropic substance, lose viscosity, and therefore flow even more, causing a significant amount of ketchup to flow out of the bottle. There are better techniques; see an article regarding pouring ketchup.

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Etymology

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Early uses in English

The word entered the English language in England during the late seventeenth century, appearing in print as catchup and later as ketchup. The following is a list of early quotations collected by the Oxford English Dictionary.

1690, B. E., A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew
- Catchup: a high East-India Sauce.
1711, Charles Lockyer, An Account of the Trade in India 128
- Soy comes in Tubbs from Jappan, and the best Ketchup from Tonquin; yet good of both sorts are made and sold very cheap in China.
1730, Jonathan Swift, A Panegyrick on the Dean Wks. 1755 IV. I. 142
- And, for our home-bred British cheer, Botargo, catsup, and caveer.
1748, Sarah Harrison, The Housekeeper's Pocket-Book and Compleat Family Cook. i. (ed. 4) 2,
- I therefore advise you to lay in a Store of Spices, ... neither ought you to be without ... Kitchup, or Mushroom Juice.
1751, Mrs. Hannah Glasse, Cookery Bk. 309
- It will taste like foreign Catchup.
1817, George Gordon Byron, Beppo viii,
- Buy in gross ... Ketchup, Soy, Chili~vinegar, and Harvey.
1832, Vegetable Substances Used for the Food of Man 333
- One ... application of mushrooms is ... converting them into the sauce called Catsup.
1840, Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1849) 91/1
- Some lamb chops (breaded, with plenty of ketchup).
1845, Eliza Acton, Modern Cookery v. (1850) 136 (L.)
- Walnut catsup.
1862, Macmillan's Magazine. Oct. 466
- He found in mothery catsup a number of yellowish globular bodies.
1874, Mordecai C. Cooke, Fungi; Their Nature, Influence and Uses 89
- One important use to which several ... fungi can be applied, is the manufacture of ketchup.

The spelling catsup seems to have appeared first from the pen of Jonathan Swift, in 1730.

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The China connection

The most popular theory is that the word ketchup was derived from "koe-chiap" or "ke-tsiap" in the Amoy dialect of China, where it meant the brine of pickled fish or shellfish. Some people prefer the Malayan word "kechap" (spelled ketjap by the Dutch), which may have come from the Chinese in the first place. And in some time in the late seventeenth century, the name and some samples might have arrived in England where it appeared in print as "catchup" in 1690 and then as "ketchup" in 1711. These names stuck with the British, who quickly appropriated them for their own pickled condiments of anchovies or oysters.

The exact Chinese characters for kôechiap has been disputed:

Theory 1: "ketchup" means "茄汁": "茄" is the Chinese character for "eggplant" or a shortened form of "tomato" (蕃茄). "Ketchup" means "茄汁" or "tomato juice (sauce)".
- Pronunciations in modern Taiwanese dialect (mainly Hokkien dialect): Kio-chiap (kio as in "kyo" in tokyo, chiap as in "chap" in chaplain but with the added "i"). The word derives from two words "Kio" taken from "Ang Mor Kio" meaning tomatoes in Hokkien dialect. Chiap simply means juice or sauce or gravy. Therefore Kio-chiap means tomato(kio) sauce(chiap).
- Pronunciations in modern Cantonese is Kher-Chap (Kher as "khe" in Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot, Chap as in "chap" in chaplain). Similar to the Taiwanese, the word derives from the meaning of two words, Kher, taken from "Fan Kher" meaning tomatoes in Cantonese and chap meaning juice or sauce or gravy. Therefore Kher-Chap means tomato sauce.
Theory 2: "ketchup" means "鮭汁": "鮭" is the Chinese character for "salmon" (鮭魚), or more generically, "fish". Therefore, "ketchup" means "鮭汁" or "fish sauce".
- Pronunciations in modern Taiwanese dialect: 鮭(kôe) 汁(chiap)
- Pronunciations in modern Cantonese: 鮭(gwai1) 汁(jap1)

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Ketchup and U.S. politics

In 1981, US President Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, proposed classifying ketchup as a vegetable as part of Reagan's budget cuts for federally financed school lunch programs (it would make it cheaper to satisfy the requirements on vegetable content of lunches). The suggestion was widely ridiculed and the proposal was killed.

In 2004, presidential challenger John Kerry's ties to H. J. Heinz Company through his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, led some supporters of George W. Bush to create an alternative called W Ketchup <ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3882023.stm</ref>. According to them, W stands for George Washington; others suspect "W" more likely refers to Bush's middle initial, which is often used as his nickname.

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