Ketchup

For other uses, see Ketchup (disambiguation).

A bottle of ketchup made by H. J. Heinz Company, the largest distributor of ketchup in the world.

Ketchup (or Catsup) (American English) or tomato sauce (Commonwealth English) is a sweet-and-sour condiment typically made from tomatoes, vinegar, sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, and an assortment of vegetable seasonings and spices such as onions, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, garlic, and celery. Ketchup is often served with fried foods such as french fries and fish and chips and grilled foods such as hot dogs and hamburgers. It is also used to flavor cooked meat and as a base for other sauces. It is a typical accompaniment for the meat pies of Australia and New Zealand.

Name

Ketchup is the dominant term in (American English); tomato sauce is not a synonym for ketchup in American English. Commonwealth English largely favors the term tomato sauce instead of ketchup; for example, in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Other terms include tomato ketchup, red sauce, and, in Australian rhyming slang, dead horse.

History

A bottle of Geo. Watkins mushroom ketchup.

File:Ketchup Wloclawek.jpg

A jar of Polish ketchup.

By the early 18th century, the table sauce had made it to the Malay states (present day Malaysia), where it was discovered by British explorers, and by 1740, it had become an English staple.

Tomato ketchup

Although today's ketchup is tomato based, it did not appear until about a century after other types. By 1801, a recipe for tomato ketchup was created by Sandy Addison and was later printed in an American cookbook, the Sugar House Book. James Mease published another recipe in 1812. In 1824, a ketchup recipe using tomatoes appeared in The Virginia Housewife (an influential 19th-century cookbook written by Mary Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's cousin).

As the century progressed, tomato ketchup began its ascent in popularity in the United States, influenced by the American enthusiasm for tomatoes. Tomato ketchup was sold locally by farmers. A man named Jonas Yerks (or Yerkes) is believed to have been the first man to make tomato ketchup a national phenomenon. By 1837, he had produced and distributed the condiment nationally. Shortly thereafter, other companies followed suit. F. & J. Heinz launched their tomato ketchup in 1876. Heinz tomato ketchup was advertised: "Blessed relief for Mother and the other women in the household!", a slogan which alluded to the lengthy and onerous process required to produce tomato ketchup in the home.

The Webster's Dictionary of 1913 defined "catchup" as a "table sauce made from mushrooms, tomatoes, walnuts, etc. [Also written as 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. Harvey W. Wiley, the "father" of the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S., challenged the safety of benzoate which was banned in the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. In response, entrepreneurs including 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 had less vinegar 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) believe were key to the establishment of tomato ketchup as the dominant American condiment.

Later innovations

In fast food chains, ketchup is often dispensed in small packets that hold ketchup inside. Users tear the side or top and squeeze the ketchup out of the ketchup packets. In 2010, Heinz began offering an alternate squeeze and dip cup intended to offer a cleaner method of dispensing the product.

In an earlier approach some fast food outlets dispense ketchup from pumps into paper cups. Some restaurants still use this method.

In October 2000, Heinz introduced colored ketchup products called EZ Squirt, which eventually included green, purple, pink, orange, teal, and blue. These products were made by adding food coloring to the traditional ketchup. As of January 2006 these products have been discontinued.

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	27.28 g	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 has health benefits which are offset by the salt and sugar content. Ketchup is a source of lycopene, an antioxidant which may help prevent some forms of cancer. This is particularly true of the organic brands of ketchup, which have three times as much lycopene. Ketchup, much like marinara sauce and other cooked tomato foods, yields higher levels of lycopene per serving because cooking makes lycopene in tomatoes more bio-available.

In May 2010, Hunt's stopped using high fructose corn syrup in its ketchup products in direct response to consumer demand.

Viscosity

Transferring ketchup between plastic bottles.

Tomato ketchup is a pseudoplastic, or "shear thinning", substance, a type of non-Newtonian fluid, which can make it difficult to pour from a glass bottle. Often, the neck of the bottle will appear to be blocked. A common method to getting ketchup out of the bottle involves inverting the bottle and shaking it or hitting the bottom with the heel of the hand, which causes the ketchup to flow rapidly. A technique known widely among caterers involves inverting the bottle and forcefully tapping its upper neck with two fingers (index and middle finger together). Specifically, with the Heinz ketchup product, one taps the 57 circle on the neck. This helps the ketchup flow by applying correct shearing force. These techniques work because of how pseudoplastic fluids behave: their viscosity (resistance to flow) decreases with increasing shear rate. The faster the ketchup is sheared (by shaking or tapping the bottle), the more fluid it becomes. After the shear is removed the ketchup thickens to its original viscosity.

Etymology

The etymology of the word ketchup is uncertain, with multiple competing theories.

China theory

The China theory is that the word derives from one of two words from the Fujian region of coastal southern China: "kôe-chiap" (in the Xiamen accent) or "kê-chiap" (in the Zhangzhou accent). Both of these words come from the Amoy dialect of China, where it meant the brine of pickled fish or shellfish. The Chinese characters representing the word kôe-chiap are disputed, with two primary theories as to the word's original Chinese orthography. There are citations of "koe-chiap" in the Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of the Amoy (London; Trudner) from 1873, defined as "brine of pickled fish or shell-fish."

Eggplant sauce

An alternative Chinese theory expounded in certain dictionaries states that the word "ketchup" derives from a Chinese word composed of two characters (茄汁), which means "eggplant sauce". The first character (茄), meaning "eggplant", is also the root for the word "tomato" (番茄 in Mandarin and Cantonese or 紅毛茄 in Taiwanese). Some have stated (without authority) that at the relevant time tomatoes were unknown in China; however, the first recorded mention of "tomato" in China is Zhao Han's (赵函) "Zhi Pin"("植品") (1617) which states that the tomato was introduced into China by missionaries in the late 16th century. The second character (汁) means "juice" or "sauce". Pronunciations of this word vary by region, but their similarities to the English "ketchup" can be noticed. However, this theory is generally discredited, since there are citations of "ketchup" from the 17th Century, 200 years before tomatoes were used in ketchup, at least in the West.

茄汁
Language	Pronunciation (IPA)	Other transcriptions
Cantonese	[kʰɛ̌ːtsɐ́p]	Jyutping	ke2 zap1
Taiwanese	[kjo˩˧tɕap˨]	POJ	kiô-chiap

Malay theory

Ketchup may have entered the English language from the Malay word kicap (pron. "kichap", also spelled kecap, ketjap), originally meaning "fish sauce", which itself may be a loan from Chinese terms above.

In Indonesian cuisine, which is very similar to Malay, the term kecap or ketjap refers to a soy sauce. Two main types are well known in their cuisine: ketjap asin (a salty soy sauce) and ketjap manis (a sweet soy sauce that is a mixture of soy sauce with brown sugar, molasses,garlic, ginger, anise, coriander and a bay leaf reduced over medium heat until rather syrupy).

European-Arabic theory

American anthropologist E.N. Anderson claimed that ketchup is a cognate of the French escaveche, meaning "food in sauce". The word also exists in Spanish and Portuguese forms as escabeche, "a sauce for pickling", which culinary historian Karen Hess traced back to Arabic iskebey, or "pickling with vinegar". The term was anglicized to caveach, a word first attested in the late 17th century, at the same time as ketchup.

Early uses in English

The word entered the English language in England during the late 17th century, appearing in print as catchup (1690) and later as ketchup (1711). The following is a list of early quotations collected by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Blue Label Tomato Ketchup advertisement from 1898.

• 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 Japan, 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.

In politics

Main article: Ketchup as a vegetable

In 1981, Congress under the Reagan administration ordered the United States Department of Agriculture to issue new standards for federally financed school lunch programs, which would enable schools to economize; one of the USDA's proposals was to classify ketchup as a vegetable. The suggestion was widely ridiculed and the proposal was dropped.

See also

• Banana ketchup
• Heinz Tomato Ketchup
• Mustard (condiment)
• Shelf stable food
• Tomato paste
• Tomato purée
• Tomato sauce

External links

• Ketchup: King Of Condiments – WBGU-PBS local documentary