The Origins of Ketchup by Anna

Yello! This is Anna.

Alexis was writing about the origin of Friday the 13, so I’m writing about the origin of ketchup.

[From The Plate]

The word ketchup comes from the Hokkien Chinese word: kê-tsiap, which is a sauce made from fermented fish.

Enter the tomato, the first published found ketchup recipe was found in 1812, written by scientist and horticulturalist,
James Mead. James referred tomatoes to “love apples”. James’ recipe included tomato pulp and spices, but lacked
vinegar and sugar.

Ketchup was made successful, because it  could be kept for a whole year!

Still, the making of the ketchup was hard, because they had to preserve tomato pulp all, year, round. Some producers
made ketchup terribly! It had bacteria, spores, yeast, and mold! Eeeww!😝
In 1866, Chef Pierre Blot named ketchup as “filthy, decomposed, and putrid”.
Early investigators found out that ketchup had unsafe preservatives namely coal tar, which gives ketchup red color,
and sodium benzoate. At the end of the 19th century, benzoates were seen as harmful to health.

Henry J. Heinz started producing ketchup in 1876, and he created a ketchup recipe with red, ripe tomatoes and no
preservatives. That’s the same ketchup we eat today! In 1905, the company had sold 5 million bottles of
preservative-free ketchup.

Even though ketchup is loved by many Americans and 97% of Americans have ketchup in their kitchen, ketchup is
not the number one product sold in the U.S.A. It's mayonnaise!

Thanks for reading!

Anna