Ketchup Ketchup Plautia Urgulanilla Category="Condiments"
This article is about the condiment; for the singers, see Las Ketchup.

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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 Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, New Zealand and the UK, ketchup is commonly referred to as Tomato 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. Some popular early main ingredients include Anchovy, Oyster, Lobster, Walnut, kidney bean, Cucumber, Cranberry, Lemon, and Grape.

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

History

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:

  1. 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.
  2. Stir them to prevent burning.
  3. 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.
  4. Boil over a slow fire till quite thick, stir all the time.
  5. Bottle when cold.
  6. 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 catsup recipe.

A 20th century grape catsup 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 catsup.

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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 cond . 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 ) 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.

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.

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 , has led to a 12% increase as of 2004 in ketchup consumption in homes with children . These products (as of August 2005) 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. Based on U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowances and recommendations from the United States National Research Council, the table illustrates how ketchup is less healthy due to its sweetness and added salt.

Nutrient(per 100 g)KetchupLow SodiumKetchupTomatoes,year-roundUSDA commoditysalsaLa VictoriaSalsa Brava, Hot
Energy100 kcal
419 kJ		104 kcal
435 kJ		18 kcal
75 kJ		36 kcal
150 kJ		40 kcal
170 kJ
Water68.33 g66.58 g94.50 g89.70 g88.67 g
Protein1.74 g1.52 g0.88 g1.50 g1.36 g
Fats0.49 g0.36 g0.20 g0.20 g1.11 g
Carbohydrates25.78 g27.28g3.92 g7.00 g6.16 g
Sodium1110 mg20 mg5 mg430 mg648 mg
Vitamin C15.1 mg15.1 mg12.7 mg4 mg7.2 mg
Lycopene17007 μg18968 μg2573 μgn/an/a

Ketchup packets from fast-food restaurants:

RestaurantPacketsizeEnergySodiumCarbo-hydrates
Arby's9 g10 kcal (42 kJ)100 mg2 g
Burger King10 g10 kcal (42 kJ)127 mg3 g
Jack in the Box9 g10 kcal (42 kJ)105 mg2 g

Etymology

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.

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

The China connection

One popular theory is that the word ketchup is derived from kôechiap or kê-tsiap which is from the Amoy dialect of China by way of the Malay/Indonesian word, kecap (pr. similar to "ketchup").

The exact Chinese characters for kôechiap has been disputed:

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 . 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.

See also

External links

Early recipes

Other non-commercial recipes