You know what’s good with ketchup? Fries. French fries. And then some more fries.
You know what’s even better with ketchup? Read on to find out.
A table sauce initially made a whole lot differently than today and derived from a totally different array of ingredients, ketchup may be sitting at the dining table of 97 percent of the American population today, may very well be an iconic American condiment, but the origins of this sauce are far from being American.
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Ketchup wasn’t invented in America. It comes from someplace else entirely. Ketchup comes from China and is derived from fermented fish.
The evolution of ketchup
How can something like the ketchup we know today have derived from something like fermented fish? Mysterious are the ways of Chinese cuisine, but even more mysterious, or we should say interesting, is the evolution of ketchup.
It all starts with the name. The word “ketchup” comes from the word “kê-tsiap” in the Hokkien dialect of the Chinese language.
Kê-tsiap was a sauce that the Chinese made from fermented fish. This sauce travelled from Vietnam to southeastern China, and in Southeast Asia met the British who very dearly took notice of it and tried to make it at home.
There is evidence that the British were preparing it widely already in the 18th century. However, the sauce was nothing like the ketchup we know today. That recipe included ingredients such as mushrooms, oysters, walnuts, mussels and even anchovies, the British doing their best to come up with a replica as tasty as the Chinese fermented sauce.
Further along the line ketchup was improved with tomato pulp. In fact, the first tomato ketchup was made in 1812, and the recipe also included spices and brandy. Around this time, however, a particular problem prevented tomato ketchup from becoming popular.
To make the sauce producers needed tomato pulp that was preserved for this purpose alone, but some of the tomato pulp got contaminated due to poor handling. On top of that, people noted that commercial ketchup contained preservatives in unhealthy amounts and demanded an alternative.
This is where Henry J. Heinz who founded the Heinz Company came into play to give Americans non-chemicals ketchup. He developed a recipe that ended up dominating the market.
Which do you prefer? Heinz or your very own homemade ketchup?
While it’s trickier to reproduce the exact flavor of the commercial ketchup at home, many people attempt it and some to great success. Some of the ingredients they use are pepper, cinnamon, cloves, celery salt, horseradish, and mustard seed just so they obtain results as closest to the store-bought ketchup as possible.
The ketchup that the British made was often added to soups and other sauces or eaten with meat and fish. You can add and eat ketchup with so many foods other than with French fries. Here are some ideas to inspire more ketchup into your life.
Eat ketchup with eggs: scrambled eggs; hard boiled eggs; fried eggs.
Eat ketchup with vegetarian and vegan foods: salads; veggie burger; kale chips.
Eat ketchup with cheese: mozzarella sticks; grilled cheese sandwich; cottage cheese; mac and cheese.
Eat ketchup with meat: pork chops; lamb chops; cheeseburger; fried bologna; chicken fried steak.
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Eat ketchup with: onion rings; Fritos; nachos; corn on the cob; crab cakes; fish sticks; pretzels; Cheetos.