Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today we have a sweet episode for you.
Speaker 1: We have a salty episode for you. We have a
Speaker 1: relatively slow flowing, kind of uh, kind of stachy episode
Speaker 1: for nice, thick episode for you. Because today's episode is
Speaker 1: about catch up, which I just want to go ahead
Speaker 1: and put it out there. This is gonna be far
Speaker 1: more interesting, far more complex, and a little bit more
Speaker 1: confusing than you might anticipate. You know, I was wondering
Speaker 1: if we should start by confessing the strange things that
Speaker 1: we put catch up on, because you just assume everybody
Speaker 1: has some strange thing they put catch upon. But I
Speaker 1: realize I am so boring. When it comes to catch up.
Speaker 1: They go on fries for French fries, I put it today.
Speaker 1: These days, I put catch up on French fries if
Speaker 1: I have them, and put them on tater tots if
Speaker 1: I have them. Um, what else? That's those are the
Speaker 1: main things. Really. Um. If I'm making my own cocktail
Speaker 1: sauce off, it's obviously I use ketchup as the base
Speaker 1: for that. But um, yeah, Aside from that, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever had any strange ketchup habits
Speaker 1: growing up. I would I think I would occasionally take
Speaker 1: a baked potato and cut it up into rounds and
Speaker 1: put ketchup on that with two to the slightly slight disapproval,
Speaker 1: I think of the rest of the table. But my
Speaker 1: argument was, look, this is essentially the same as French fries.
Speaker 1: We put catch up on French fries. I'm just doing
Speaker 1: this to my baked potato instead of covering it in
Speaker 1: butter and sour cream and what have you. How about you,
Speaker 1: seth Do you put ketchup on soft serve? He says no,
Speaker 1: My my son doesn't even put ketchup on anything. And
Speaker 1: he's certainly at that age where you see a lot
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, strange ketchup or even sort of
Speaker 1: catch up first strategies like one I've definitely seen before,
Speaker 1: and maybe I did see him do this when he
Speaker 1: was younger. I was like to take a French fry,
Speaker 1: dip it in the catch up, lick the ketchup off
Speaker 1: the French fry, get the French fry again, and essentially
Speaker 1: use the French fry as a soggy delivery system for
Speaker 1: that sweet uh you know, sweet and vinegary and salty, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, overpowering taste profile that is Ketchup. You know.
Speaker 1: I was looking at the Hinz website earlier today and
Speaker 1: I found one page where they were like they were
Speaker 1: trying to, i think, advertise the benefits of Ketchup beyond
Speaker 1: just it tasting good. And they're like, you can use
Speaker 1: Ketchup to get your kids to eat healthy foods. Just
Speaker 1: put Ketchup on healthy foods and then they'll eat them.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, I don't know what, how exactly
Speaker 1: does that work? And you put ketchup on spinach and
Speaker 1: then they spinach, you put it on sweet potatoes, and
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh yeah. I mean, look, I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of room to to talk on this
Speaker 1: because my my son is fortunately has always been a
Speaker 1: very good eater. But I can imagine if you're having
Speaker 1: you're struggling just trying to get any food uh into
Speaker 1: a young child, you you would you would turn to
Speaker 1: put and ketchup on just about any thing to make
Speaker 1: it happen. You know, we don't want to vilify ketchup
Speaker 1: today because catch up already in many ways has a
Speaker 1: pretty bad reputation, especially among foodies, and you know, people
Speaker 1: have sophisticated palates. I think sometimes look at ketchup as
Speaker 1: a thing that's just ruining the culinary world. It's it's
Speaker 1: worldwide global homogeneity in in cuisine. Uh makes everything taste
Speaker 1: the same. It just crushes individual flavor profiles of foods
Speaker 1: and signals that like, you don't want to taste anything
Speaker 1: for itself. Yeah, generally it's considered an insult to reach
Speaker 1: for or ask for the catch up when you order
Speaker 1: something at a really nice restaurant or even just a
Speaker 1: passively nice restaurant. Um, unless of course, you have ordered
Speaker 1: the burger and fries or some st man or of
Speaker 1: fries and it comes with, say a housemaid ketchup that
Speaker 1: is exclusively used for uh, for dipping. But then again,
Speaker 1: you get French fries at a at a nicer place,
Speaker 1: they're probably gonna have some other dipping options that are
Speaker 1: also fantastic that deviate from the standard ketch up trope
Speaker 1: smoked tomato, mayonnaise or something. Yeah, that's sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And certainly we have more condiment possibilities available to us
Speaker 1: now because but but for the long guest like catch up,
Speaker 1: you know what, Like, that's what we grew up with.
Speaker 1: You know that the ketchup is what you got it
Speaker 1: all the fast food restaurants, and today you go to
Speaker 1: just about any restaurant and there will be ketch up there. Um,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be there in pumps and bottles and packets,
Speaker 1: in slices even well, I don't know how many restaurants
Speaker 1: are really leaning on the ketchup slices, but ketchup slices
Speaker 1: do exist. Yeah, if you haven't seen it, they're like
Speaker 1: the craft singles basically. Basically, someone said, you know that,
Speaker 1: you know the hardened, dried ketchup that coagulates around the cap?
Speaker 1: What have I had a whole slice of that? Wouldn't
Speaker 1: that be great? I don't know, maybe it is great.
Speaker 1: I have not tried it. But that's what we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about today. Is is the world of ketchup?
Speaker 1: Where does it come from? What is it? And why?
Speaker 1: Why is it so potent? Why is it's so powerful?
Speaker 1: It's something we all take for granted, but it has
Speaker 1: an interesting story. So what is ketchup usually made of? Today?
Speaker 1: When you get tomato ketchup in a bottle, your standard stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, not the weird kind, just the standard ketchup
Speaker 1: you get at the store, at the diner. When we
Speaker 1: think of ketchup and we think of that that thick
Speaker 1: red stuff you squeeze out of a m out of
Speaker 1: a bottle, you're generally talking about tomato, sauce, sugar or
Speaker 1: another sweetener, vinegar, salt, and some sort of proprietary blend
Speaker 1: of spices and seasonings, industrial additives, maybe preservatives, something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think commonly your tomato element and your sugar
Speaker 1: element are probably going to be tomato paste and higher
Speaker 1: discorn syrup. Yeah, highfrid discorn serrup has of course become
Speaker 1: the standards, especially here in the United States. But that
Speaker 1: being said, and as we'll touch on later, like you
Speaker 1: can find a lot of ketchups on the market, including
Speaker 1: ones from hines that that are sweetened, say with with
Speaker 1: a sugar or honey, or reduce sugar and honey. You know,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of other options out there now. When
Speaker 1: in previous decades, though, I think it was it was
Speaker 1: pretty much you had the one choice right right, So
Speaker 1: when we when we dip a fern fry and catch
Speaker 1: up where we put ketch up on our you know,
Speaker 1: our burgers are hot dogs or wantons, whatever you're you're
Speaker 1: putting it on. You know, it brings that blessed sweet,
Speaker 1: sour and salty taste to any bite. So it's it's
Speaker 1: potent stuff. It delivers several things that we as organisms
Speaker 1: are hardwired to crave uh and and crave it we do.
Speaker 1: That's why you see some serious pump abuse sometimes at
Speaker 1: your local fast food restaurants, you know, where they'll they'll
Speaker 1: they'll fill up not one cup, not too but maybe
Speaker 1: three or four just to make sure they're they're covering
Speaker 1: all their ground there, you know, they have all their
Speaker 1: options available to them, or just pump it all over
Speaker 1: top a big pile of fries. People do that. I'm
Speaker 1: not of that school. I'm a dipper, not a drizzler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I prefer to because if it's drizzled, you're gonna end
Speaker 1: up with that one French fry that is that is
Speaker 1: drowned lost to the catchup um. But then again, I
Speaker 1: think that has a benefit as you you know, as
Speaker 1: many of us become a little wiser as we get older,
Speaker 1: and we realized we should not eat all the French
Speaker 1: fries better than some of the French fries drowned and
Speaker 1: become inedible, than to actually polish off the entire plate.
Speaker 1: But again, ketchup has a an overpowering at times flavor profile. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it goes really well with certain things obviously. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's and it's good to have an overpowering flavor
Speaker 1: profile if you're eating something that is say, less than appetizing. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's certainly gonna insult the chef if you reach
Speaker 1: for it when you're having, you know, something that has
Speaker 1: a very delicate and planned out flavor profile itself. And
Speaker 1: something I should say in addition to so you mentioned
Speaker 1: that ketchup tends it's got this trio of flavors that
Speaker 1: we like in a lot of sauces. It's got sweetness,
Speaker 1: it's got acidity or sourness, and it's got saltiness. But
Speaker 1: it's also got this other thing that's harder to define.
Speaker 1: It's the the umami flavor. It comes from the tomatoes,
Speaker 1: for you know, from the it is from the fermentation. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's this savory, you know, deliciousness kind of quality that
Speaker 1: that's a little bit um. It's not as sharper as
Speaker 1: easily noticeable as the other three types of flavors. But
Speaker 1: you really value it in many foods that you like,
Speaker 1: and so it shouldn't become as a surprise that, especially
Speaker 1: in the United States, it has become such a popular condiment.
Speaker 1: I see that the number kind of varies. But for instance,
Speaker 1: in a two thousand fourteen article from on the National
Speaker 1: Geographic website, how was ketchup invented? By Jasmine and Wiggins Uh,
Speaker 1: the author sites nine percent of American households report having
Speaker 1: a bottle of the stuff around. That is a I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a huge number. That's a huge number. I've seen it.
Speaker 1: I've seen it higher, generally by ketchup companies, and I've
Speaker 1: also seen it a little lower. But I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: without you know, arguing over the exact number, like it
Speaker 1: is a very widespread condiment, not only here, but now
Speaker 1: you know, in various places around the world. But yet,
Speaker 1: there was a time before ketchup. There was a time
Speaker 1: when there was no ketchup. And we're going to begin
Speaker 1: our journey by by traveling back in time. Let's get
Speaker 1: some time travel sound effects. Can we can we blue blue,
Speaker 1: blue blup or something? All right, Well, so we're traveling back. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're seeking that time before ketchup? Was there a time
Speaker 1: before Ketchup? Yes? But also no, because I told you
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a little more confused in the
Speaker 1: might think because in a large sense we have to
Speaker 1: consider the legacy of the condiment, of the sauce itself,
Speaker 1: and to think about its inception. You know, what, what
Speaker 1: does it mean to put a sauce on something? Like?
Speaker 1: What is what is ketchup itself? You know what is
Speaker 1: what is it essentially doing? And it's pointed out in
Speaker 1: Pure Ketchup, a History of America's National condiment with recipes
Speaker 1: by Andrew F. Smith, who who will keep coming back
Speaker 1: to because Andrew seems to be the one of the
Speaker 1: primary authorities on the history of ketchup. He's like the
Speaker 1: world Ketchup lore master. He's the l Rond of the
Speaker 1: Saruman of Ketchup. Yes, but according to Smith, humans have
Speaker 1: attempted to preserve foods with salt for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: It retards the growth of bacteria, and salt and water
Speaker 1: used like this, you know, is known as brining. Brian
Speaker 1: something just right, and certain species of bacteria produce lactic acid,
Speaker 1: which kills off harmful of that bacteria and lowers the
Speaker 1: pH It also creates an environment suitable for fermentation, and
Speaker 1: this changes the flavor. Yeah, this pickling. Yeah, And of
Speaker 1: course we have pickling traditions in culture is just around
Speaker 1: the world. And we can easily do an entire episode
Speaker 1: just on pickling and food preserve preservation that I think
Speaker 1: we will. Yeah, that that in and of itself is
Speaker 1: a is a fascinating topic, especially when you get into
Speaker 1: all the varied forms of it um from like burying
Speaker 1: a bunch of dead birds in the earth. You know
Speaker 1: too well, the earth does play a role in a
Speaker 1: number of different fermentation uh uh strategies that were developed,
Speaker 1: the idea of taking something, taking a few ingredients, bundling
Speaker 1: it away in the darkness of the earth, and then
Speaker 1: bringing it back up when you need it when the
Speaker 1: time of the harvest has grown cold. But as a
Speaker 1: Smith points out, fermented sauces were certainly used by ancient
Speaker 1: peoples to enhance flavors in their food as well as
Speaker 1: and this is key to hide unpleasant odors because you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of times, especially in the ancient world or
Speaker 1: any time prior to our our modern age of of
Speaker 1: of food abundance and food waste. You know, you often
Speaker 1: have you had what you had, and sometimes it might
Speaker 1: not smell that pleasant or taste that pleasant, but it
Speaker 1: was what was for dinner. Uh. It was the meal,
Speaker 1: and you had to choke it down one way or
Speaker 1: the other. Uh, And so you might need to cover
Speaker 1: up the underlying flavor or odor. So it's when a
Speaker 1: bottle of ketchup would have come in real handy back then, exactly.
Speaker 1: And they didn't quite have ketchup certainly, But the Greeks
Speaker 1: and the Romans used something called garum, Smith says, which
Speaker 1: was a fermented fish sauce. It was itself a byproduct
Speaker 1: of salting tons of foot fish as a means of
Speaker 1: preserving those fish. Yeah, and there are modern analogs of
Speaker 1: of garum. There's an Italian cuisine. There's this stuff called colatura.
Speaker 1: That's this you know, salty fermented fish sauce flavor that's delicious.
Speaker 1: In Asian cuisines, you've got various forms of fish sauce
Speaker 1: like nonpla oyster sauces, etcetera. Yeah, exactly. So you take
Speaker 1: some seafood you'd heavily salted, and you get an extract
Speaker 1: from it. Um that is this funky, highly savory, ummi
Speaker 1: rich salty kind of thing, and it's great. You know,
Speaker 1: that stuff is great, not just in the you know,
Speaker 1: the cuisines it's traditionally associated with, but chefs today use,
Speaker 1: for example, Asia Southeast Asian style fish sauce in all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. You'll find chefs putting uh Thai fish
Speaker 1: sauce and beef stews and in chili and bolonnaise and
Speaker 1: everything anyway anywhere you want to like boost the beefy
Speaker 1: flavor of food. And they vary a lot, not only
Speaker 1: in their their flavor, but also in their consistency. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a summer, very thick, there's a very watery
Speaker 1: uh and and I always any anytime you visit um
Speaker 1: uh you know, a new you know, Asian restaurant, do
Speaker 1: try all of the sauces, especially the ones you are
Speaker 1: not familiar with, just to get a good uh you know,
Speaker 1: a good you know, overall of the taste sensations available. Totally.
Speaker 1: So yes, obviously, we have a wealth of pickling traditions
Speaker 1: from around the world. Though it's a Smith points out
Speaker 1: in the media. In the medieval world, in the medieval
Speaker 1: European world, the byproduct of those pickling endeavors were often
Speaker 1: just discarded instead of being reutilized as some sort of
Speaker 1: a sauce um. And uh, I have to say that
Speaker 1: my my son does not adhere to this, as he
Speaker 1: loves to drink down the pickle juice from the pickle jar.
Speaker 1: He'll drink down the sardine oil from the sardine can.
Speaker 1: Uh he is, he does, he does not waste any
Speaker 1: of it. Well, first of all, I can sympathize because
Speaker 1: of course pickles are delicious and and that liquid therefore
Speaker 1: is also somewhat delicious. But second, this springs up. I
Speaker 1: don't even know if we should get into this. This
Speaker 1: is we probably should. Okay, I don't want to spend
Speaker 1: half an hour talking about this, but I just had
Speaker 1: to mention my favorite article of all time from my
Speaker 1: hometown newspaper, the Chattanooga Times Free Press, hit Caught in
Speaker 1: a Pickle Chattanooga attorney Collma friends explain strange addiction and
Speaker 1: it's about people who can't stop drinking pickle juice. The
Speaker 1: main figure in this article is a local lawyer who
Speaker 1: tells these stories about how when he's driving home from
Speaker 1: more he would stop at the grocery store and he'd
Speaker 1: get a jar of pickles and take him out to
Speaker 1: his car, and he dump all the pickles out in
Speaker 1: the parking lot and just guzzle down all the juice.
Speaker 1: But now he's figured out that the smarter and more
Speaker 1: economical thing is just to buy jugs of pickle juice,
Speaker 1: like dill pickle juice by itself. You can order it
Speaker 1: from I don't know, various manufacturers. I guess some people
Speaker 1: just add their cucumbers straight to dill pickle juice. But
Speaker 1: there are these accompanying photos on the Times Free Press
Speaker 1: website of this guy posing with a gallon jug of
Speaker 1: dill pick old Brian. That's a stigious award. Yes, I
Speaker 1: love this. Uh this, I mean I've I've I've read
Speaker 1: articles about like people who are such fermentation enthusiasts that
Speaker 1: they and and sometimes they you know, they back this
Speaker 1: up with arguments about the you know, the health benefits
Speaker 1: of fermented products, and and they'll they'll sometimes take on
Speaker 1: like a very fermentation heavy diet. But I also have
Speaker 1: heard just anecdotal accounts so that I think my my
Speaker 1: aunt was really into crowd juice for it for a
Speaker 1: long time, and maybe still is just just because she
Speaker 1: liked it or for like like health remody kind of,
Speaker 1: I think it was because she just like the flavor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I love pickles too. I don't go that far,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it reminds me that the Hannibal Burriss stand
Speaker 1: up comedy debt where he's talking about saving the jar
Speaker 1: of pickles pickled juice after all the pickles are gone,
Speaker 1: so that he can flick it onto his grilled cheese sandwich.
Speaker 1: I don't know this bit. It sounds smart, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: it Basically it's like a it's it's a bit about
Speaker 1: roommates and not one in the roommate to throw out
Speaker 1: the pickle juice because the pickle st juice still has
Speaker 1: use and it can still be flicked onto. And I
Speaker 1: think that that gets down to what we're talking about here, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: the the resulting h pickle juice is still still packs flavor.
Speaker 1: It can still be used to enhance other foods. So
Speaker 1: even though the you know, in the medieval uh European world,
Speaker 1: people weren't that into saving their their food preparation juices, uh,
Speaker 1: still you had traditions of creating sauces from early Greek
Speaker 1: times onward, Europeans made sauces that were based in large
Speaker 1: part on vinegar raging for ranging from the simple to
Speaker 1: the complex, and they grew very complex in Elizabethan Britain. Uh. Sauce,
Speaker 1: after all, is where we get the the saucer from
Speaker 1: which is of course ends up being so vitally connected
Speaker 1: with the t culture that grows out of Britain. It's
Speaker 1: actually for sauce. I had no idea. Yeah. This according
Speaker 1: to our ketchup expert Andrew F. Smith. All right, well,
Speaker 1: I don't mean this is a slam against British food,
Speaker 1: but if you are sometimes going to be consuming i
Speaker 1: don't know, say largely bland foods in your diet, sauces
Speaker 1: are clearly going to become pretty popular. Yeah. Yeah, and uh.
Speaker 1: He points out that in Robert may five book The
Speaker 1: Accomplished Cook, Uh, the author list thirteen sauce categories, and
Speaker 1: each of those sauce categories can contain upwards of a
Speaker 1: dozen different sauces that you can make to say, put
Speaker 1: on your mutton. Yeah. Now, I don't know how this
Speaker 1: lines up historically with the French sauce tradition, but obviously
Speaker 1: that's a huge thing as well, Like you know, the
Speaker 1: French have all these uh, French high cuisine has this
Speaker 1: whole family system of sauces, like sauces that you make,
Speaker 1: and then the sauces that are derived from those sauces,
Speaker 1: the mother sauces, and the sauces you make out of them.
Speaker 1: For example, you might make like a French brown sauce,
Speaker 1: and then from that can be derived these vinegar based changes. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's very complex. So that's the the European theater roughly.
Speaker 1: But then also, of course, you know, across across the continent,
Speaker 1: across eur Asia, you have different traditions going on. Um.
Speaker 1: Assalted and fermented fish sauces are an ancient part of
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia and as well, and you know they're they're too,
Speaker 1: were numerous and varied in their flavor and consistency. For instance,
Speaker 1: in in China, the soybean was domesticated uh by roughly
Speaker 1: b c. E. And eventually soy sauce springs from this,
Speaker 1: one of the great sauces of of human creation, the
Speaker 1: ultimate savory condiment. Yeah, and then uh, you know, eventually
Speaker 1: the Western and Eastern kingdoms of the sauce eventually meet
Speaker 1: and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, British and European
Speaker 1: sailors were introduced to and impressed by the various soy
Speaker 1: and fish sauces and sauces that they inevitably didn't even
Speaker 1: really know, you know, what the ingredients were. They just
Speaker 1: knew that when you put it on food, it was amazing.
Speaker 1: And they no doubt, Um, you know, we're enthralled by
Speaker 1: the possibility of bringing these sauces back to to spice
Speaker 1: up things at home that we're either bland or had
Speaker 1: grown bland to their now you know, excited palate and
Speaker 1: uh and yeah, So they encountered these things on their voyages.
Speaker 1: Smith writes, quote from this culinary crucible assaulted pickled and
Speaker 1: fermented foods from ancient Europe and exotic Southeast Asia. British
Speaker 1: ketchup materialized during the eighteenth century. All Right, it's time
Speaker 1: to take a Breakpool will be right back with more
Speaker 1: on the history of ketchup. Alright, we're back, Okay, Joe
Speaker 1: who invented the ketchup? Was it Sir Carmichael Ketchup? Was it?
Speaker 1: Was it Baron von ketch Up? There have been names
Speaker 1: proposed by various food historians over the years. But these
Speaker 1: these proposals are definitely wrong, Like we just know for
Speaker 1: a fact, like we don't know the inventor of the
Speaker 1: original ketchup. But as we've been explaining someone, the quest
Speaker 1: chin of Ketchups inventors fraught anyway, because the sauce has
Speaker 1: evolved so much over time. So where do you put
Speaker 1: the inventor? Ketchup seems to be a long lineage of
Speaker 1: copies of copies of types of sauces, and so the
Speaker 1: origins of Ketchup bear very little resemblance to the sauce
Speaker 1: that's sold under that name in most of the world today.
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, we will do our best to trace the
Speaker 1: origins of how that sauce came to be. So when
Speaker 1: you think about the characteristics of Ketchup, uh, Andrew F.
Speaker 1: Smith points this out, and I think he's correct. You
Speaker 1: try to think of the three main characteristics of ketchup,
Speaker 1: but you'd probably think that it's something that's thick, something
Speaker 1: that is sweet, and something that is made from tomatoes, right, yes,
Speaker 1: and of course also just vitally red like so red
Speaker 1: that that it often in our comedies and uh, you
Speaker 1: know cartoons, it is a substitute for human blood yes, uh,
Speaker 1: and so the origins of ketchup possessed probably none of
Speaker 1: these qualities at all. Not made from tomatoes, not sweet,
Speaker 1: not thick, not read uh. And so. In his book
Speaker 1: in In Pure Ketchup and f Smith relays a number
Speaker 1: of competing theories about the origins of ketchup, most of
Speaker 1: which we now know are almost definitely wrong. A lot
Speaker 1: of the older origin stories lie in Europe, like, for example,
Speaker 1: that ketchup comes from the English word cavitch, which is
Speaker 1: a type of fish pickled in vinegar. This and the
Speaker 1: idea that this is a cognate for the French term
Speaker 1: escovich a, which means like food and sauce for the
Speaker 1: Spanish escabech a uh, this theory is now considered incorrect.
Speaker 1: It seems generally agreed that ketchup, as we were saying
Speaker 1: before the break, comes from some kind of tradition of
Speaker 1: Asian cuisine. But while that's pretty well established, it gets
Speaker 1: harder to pin down in more definite ways. In eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, somebody named Nas Dallas speculated that the word
Speaker 1: ketchup comes from a Japanese word keep job k I
Speaker 1: t j A P. However, this does not seem to
Speaker 1: be an act rule Japanese word or even a possible
Speaker 1: Japanese word, that that formation does not come together in
Speaker 1: Japanese syllables um. It's also been speculated to have come
Speaker 1: from a Melee word k E C A P. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how that would have been pronounced. Maybe catch up, However,
Speaker 1: this also seems unlikely. I think among food historians, the
Speaker 1: favorite theory now, as originally put forth by the editors
Speaker 1: of the Oxford English Dictionary UH, seems to be that
Speaker 1: the English word ketchup has Chinese origins, and that it
Speaker 1: really comes from Kate's yap quote, a word from the
Speaker 1: Amoy dialect of Chinese meaning the brine of pickled fish.
Speaker 1: So this would give it a fish origin, though I've
Speaker 1: seen other origins on mission. In a second Smith notes
Speaker 1: that an ethnologist named Terry En de la Cooperie has
Speaker 1: argued that while the word is Chinese, it does not
Speaker 1: appear to have come from the Chinese mainland, and that
Speaker 1: the scholar thinks it more likely emerged from Chinese speakers
Speaker 1: living swhere in Southeast Asia, such as in Vietnam, and
Speaker 1: that the British probably first came into contact with this
Speaker 1: sauce and the name of this sauce somewhere in what
Speaker 1: is today Indonesia. Now, I was also reading about the
Speaker 1: origins of ketchup from the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and
Speaker 1: Drink in America, and that's from O U P edited
Speaker 1: by Bruce Craig. From the editors there. Oh, also I
Speaker 1: should say that the entry is by Andrew F. Smith,
Speaker 1: yet again apparently just seems to be the ketchup master.
Speaker 1: But this entry is more recent than his book, so
Speaker 1: I would imagine it incorporates, you know, more recent sources
Speaker 1: and scholarship on that the editors here and Smith seemed
Speaker 1: to still be going with the idea of the Chinese
Speaker 1: language origin story for the term ketchup. They think it
Speaker 1: comes from Kate's Yap and it would refer to a
Speaker 1: savory fermented sauce here though they say not made out
Speaker 1: of fish, but made out of soybeans. Um So, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. There seemed to be these competing theories about
Speaker 1: whether this sauce would have been fish based or soybean based,
Speaker 1: or maybe both, but there does seem to be general
Speaker 1: agreement that this was some kind of very ummi rich
Speaker 1: savory kind of sauce and fermented soybeans in salt or
Speaker 1: brian provide a fantastic savory flavor in many forms. We've
Speaker 1: talked about fish based sauces like garam or whatever, but
Speaker 1: but soybean based sauces are amazing. Of course, soy sauce,
Speaker 1: the ultimate savory condiment, is brewed with soybeans and usually
Speaker 1: some kind of roasted grain. But that's not the only one.
Speaker 1: You've also got, for example, miso in Japanese cuisine, which
Speaker 1: is a seasoning, often in the paste form, that gets
Speaker 1: made from fermented soybeans and other varying ingredients like cochi.
Speaker 1: You know this reminds me. You know, you occasionally see
Speaker 1: sort of you know, loose time travel arguments where someone
Speaker 1: will say, hey, if you were able to bring back,
Speaker 1: you know, six machine guns in a time machine and
Speaker 1: go back to the ancient Rome, could you conquer the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire? I think of even more interesting question is
Speaker 1: if you were to bring back like a single um
Speaker 1: uh pattie of spices and sauces from say your local
Speaker 1: Vietnamese restaurants or or Thai restaurant, could you conquer Yeah,
Speaker 1: any empire of the British Empire, or certainly the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: The Romans were big foodies. They were all about exploring
Speaker 1: new flavors. But if you were to present them with this, uh,
Speaker 1: would you have the upper hand at least until you
Speaker 1: ran out anyway? Yeah, maybe instead you should bring like
Speaker 1: a soy sauce brewery along with you, a few a
Speaker 1: few recipes, secret recipes in code. Yeah. So Smith writes anyway,
Speaker 1: that the British colonists and traders would have come into
Speaker 1: contact with sauces of these kinds, either maybe while in
Speaker 1: China or as we were saying earlier, maybe more likely
Speaker 1: somewhere in Indonesia, and then they tried to duplicate the
Speaker 1: flavor once they came back home, but without access to
Speaker 1: the crucial ingredient, at least in one branch of this
Speaker 1: theory of soybeans. Yeah, I love the idea that they've
Speaker 1: they've brought there, this this precious sauce back with them
Speaker 1: and they've used it up. They've you know, they've they've
Speaker 1: they've they've beat on the butt of the bottle, they've
Speaker 1: they've they've they've they've used their knife to get as
Speaker 1: much out as possible. They they've added hot water and
Speaker 1: shaking it up and then poured the remnants onto their food.
Speaker 1: But now they are out and they must try somehow
Speaker 1: to create it again with the limited resources that they have.
Speaker 1: So it's like people doing the copycat recipes the same way.
Speaker 1: Today you'll find somebody with a blog who's like, here's
Speaker 1: my uh, here's my Chick fil a chicken sandwich recipe.
Speaker 1: You know, they make it home instead of going there.
Speaker 1: That's what they would do with this sauce. And another
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I was thinking about this origin
Speaker 1: in Southeast Asian and Indonesia is you mentioned earlier that
Speaker 1: not Geo article by Jasmine Wiggins that it cites as
Speaker 1: an example of an early ketchup recipe in English, a
Speaker 1: recipe published by an author named Richard Bradley in seventeen
Speaker 1: thirty two for something called Ketchup in Haste, which said
Speaker 1: that the sauce came from quote bin cooling in the
Speaker 1: East Indies. And I think this must be referring to
Speaker 1: an area of the of British bin cooling, which is
Speaker 1: spelled differently than it is here in this citation, but
Speaker 1: it would have been pronounced the same. I guess, and
Speaker 1: it's this coastal region of Sumatra around the area of
Speaker 1: today's Bengkulu City, which is of course in the country
Speaker 1: of Indonesia. But anyway, wherever this comes from, it's somewhere
Speaker 1: over there, and the British bring it back to Britain
Speaker 1: and they've they've tasted this awesome savory sauce. It's got
Speaker 1: this salty mommy punch. Maybe it's made out of fish,
Speaker 1: maybe it's made out of soybeans, maybe both, but they
Speaker 1: want to eat it again when they're back home. Like
Speaker 1: you said, they've emptied out the bottle. It's all gone,
Speaker 1: and and you lack a crucial ingredient perhaps maybe you
Speaker 1: know you or you don't know what the crucial ingredients are,
Speaker 1: so you just try to do this copycat. So the
Speaker 1: British traditions actually have plenty of alternative ummmy bomb ingredients
Speaker 1: that they could substitute to try to recreate this flavor. One,
Speaker 1: for example, would be and chovies, another would be oysters,
Speaker 1: another would be mushrooms. Mushrooms are a great umammy rich
Speaker 1: savory ingredient. If you know you want to boost that
Speaker 1: kind of flavor in something, tryading dried mushrooms to it.
Speaker 1: I've also read that they tried kidney beans and walnuts,
Speaker 1: though that's weird. I've never thought of kidney beans or
Speaker 1: walnuts as ummmy rich in flavor, but may mean I
Speaker 1: don't think of them, right, Yeah, And so they used
Speaker 1: all of these ingredients in their various British ketchups. Wiggins
Speaker 1: also points out that Jane Austin, they acclaimed author, is
Speaker 1: said to have been a big fan of mushroom ketchup
Speaker 1: in particular. Uh, but again, most of these ketchups are
Speaker 1: thin and dark, so dismiss any notions of Jane Austen
Speaker 1: nimbly snacking on French fries and bright red ketchup right, No, yeah,
Speaker 1: and probably would have been something closer to like Worcestershire
Speaker 1: sauce or soy sauce, or maybe the English condiment known
Speaker 1: as brown sauce. You know about brown sauce, Robbert And
Speaker 1: now it's like a gravy. Is that what? Because that's
Speaker 1: what I'm imagining. It's kind of like a poutine, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, gravy. No, I mean it's like a type
Speaker 1: of bottled sauce. I mean, actually, I think technically within
Speaker 1: the bounds of what we're talking about historically today, it
Speaker 1: sort of is a ketchup. It's not tomato based. It's
Speaker 1: English brown sauce. There's this brand, I think it's called
Speaker 1: Daddy's Favorite Sauce. It's kind of weird. I think there's
Speaker 1: also HP sauce that might sort of be a brown sauce.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a a tart, savory, fermented kind of sauce.
Speaker 1: It's brown in color, it's got vinegar, it's got spices, um,
Speaker 1: and people put it on, you know, breakfast, like on
Speaker 1: your your full English breakfast daigs and sausage, and I've
Speaker 1: had it, but I have seen brown sauce mentioned. So basically,
Speaker 1: I think brown sauces in line with what would have
Speaker 1: been considered ketchup at this time. By the way, it's
Speaker 1: speaking of French fries, I do want to point out
Speaker 1: that while Jane Austin would not have been having bright
Speaker 1: red tomato ketchup, she could have possibly had French fries
Speaker 1: because Thomas Jefferson was serving them at the White House
Speaker 1: at roughly the same time. Yeah, or something that was
Speaker 1: referred to as potatoes served in the French manner, which
Speaker 1: some commentators have taken to be French franc I mean essentially, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's French fries are a simple concept, um,
Speaker 1: and then once you've had them, you will you want
Speaker 1: to serve them at the highest levels of government. So
Speaker 1: I would love to see a restaurant titled Jane Austin's
Speaker 1: House of Traditional English Ketchups and potatoes serus in the
Speaker 1: French manner. Why does something sound kind of sinister about
Speaker 1: that potatoes served in the French manner? Yeah, it sounds
Speaker 1: you know, potentially um infectious taboo. You know. So I
Speaker 1: hear you like potatoes, but do you like potatoes in
Speaker 1: the French manner? Done? Okay, well we're still so here.
Speaker 1: We've got various things that are referred to as ketchups
Speaker 1: in British cuisine, derived probably from original savory sauces in
Speaker 1: Asian cuisine, made out of all kinds of different stuff, mushrooms,
Speaker 1: oysters and chovies, walnuts, beans, and so how do we
Speaker 1: get from that to the the ketchup that we were
Speaker 1: talking about at the beginning of the episode as being
Speaker 1: considered synonymous with American food, you know, American fast food
Speaker 1: especially well, so British colonists brought their interpretations of ketchup
Speaker 1: with them to America, where the recipe experiments, of course
Speaker 1: continued over the years. It didn't just stop evolving there.
Speaker 1: In Smith notes that beans and apples were tried out
Speaker 1: as major ingredients of ketchup um And of course we
Speaker 1: got to get to the tomato somehow. And here the
Speaker 1: line of connection is getting a lot clearer, because the
Speaker 1: tomato is a new World berry originally cultivated by the
Speaker 1: native peoples of Central and South America. And the tomato
Speaker 1: is also like anchovies, like mushrooms, like the fermented soybeans,
Speaker 1: rich in savory umami flavors. So already we can see
Speaker 1: ketchup as a true product of internet sational trade inspired
Speaker 1: by Asian culinary traditions interpreted by Europeans using the natural
Speaker 1: bounty of the America's. Yeah, and I think it's not
Speaker 1: surprising at all that you start to see tomatoes showing
Speaker 1: up as a main ingredient and ketchup recipes in the
Speaker 1: United States in the early eighteen hundreds. For example, an
Speaker 1: early published recipe for tomato ketchup, maybe the earliest one,
Speaker 1: was written by the American horticulturists and scientist James Mice
Speaker 1: who was living in Philadelphia in the year eighteen twelve,
Speaker 1: and Mice referred to tomatoes in this recipe as love apples,
Speaker 1: which is a term from the French the palm de
Speaker 1: more apparently the apple of love, which is interesting to
Speaker 1: me because it's parallel to the French term for potatoes
Speaker 1: palmed to tear the or the apples of the earth.
Speaker 1: And that makes me wonder, are there other French phrases
Speaker 1: of the just anything that was previously unfamiliar in the
Speaker 1: language is apples of something like Well, especially with the tomato,
Speaker 1: it makes sense, right, You're suddenly presented with this new
Speaker 1: food food. What's your frame of reference for something that
Speaker 1: looks like this? You might turn to the apple and say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's this. It's this strange apple that came from from
Speaker 1: the New World, and it's a it's a it has
Speaker 1: a totally different flavor profile. Let's start cooking with it.
Speaker 1: Of course, then again, I think also in Italian tomatoes pomadoo,
Speaker 1: and I think the origin of that is the is
Speaker 1: golden apple. Yeah, but I do love that the apple
Speaker 1: of love when you have a really good tomato, I
Speaker 1: believe that title is appropriate. Oh absolutely, But what what
Speaker 1: would the French word for peppers be. Pepper is also
Speaker 1: a new world uh crop and genus that brought over
Speaker 1: the capsicum? Would it be apple? Apples of burning? Anyway,
Speaker 1: miss recipe for catchup involved a tomato pulp base, and brandy,
Speaker 1: but did not include common ingredients you'd find today like
Speaker 1: vinegar or sugar. Now, of course, tomatoes naturally have both
Speaker 1: sweetness and acidity, but sugar and vinegar I think are
Speaker 1: used to boost those natural qualities and also for their
Speaker 1: preservative hours. And also, just to be perfectly clear, Messa's
Speaker 1: recipe here would not have been the first tomato based
Speaker 1: sauce by a long shot. I mean people were using
Speaker 1: tomatoes and sauces. It would just be one of the
Speaker 1: first known times that tomato becomes the backbone of a
Speaker 1: sauce that people are calling ketchup right, because I think
Speaker 1: this is more of a modern thing. But I've when
Speaker 1: when you have like alleged pizza sauce um an alleged
Speaker 1: pasta sauce from like a very like fast food oriented
Speaker 1: Italian restaurant. I will not name names, but sometimes they
Speaker 1: are provided here in the office, and uh, and I
Speaker 1: tasted and I'm like this is essentially catch up. This
Speaker 1: is not pasta sauce. This is not uh, this is
Speaker 1: this is nothing like spaghetti sauce. This is essentially catch up.
Speaker 1: Nothing says the old Country like noodles boiled for twenty
Speaker 1: five minutes and ketchup and lots of cheese. So at
Speaker 1: this point the stage is set for for for what
Speaker 1: is largely the next phase of food preparation, and that
Speaker 1: industrial food preparation. Of preparation, Yeah, exactly so. Throughout the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, industrial food production and packaging increased, UH, And
Speaker 1: there were multiple types of ketchup sold throughout the United
Speaker 1: States at this point, especially after the Civil War, and
Speaker 1: at this point tomato ketchup was still only one of
Speaker 1: these major varieties of ketchup. But by the end of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, I think at this point the conquest
Speaker 1: of tomato ketchup was complete. So it sort of happened
Speaker 1: over the course of the eighteen hundreds. Uh. The conquest
Speaker 1: was complete in a couple of ways, both in terms
Speaker 1: of becoming the primary variety of ketchup found on tables
Speaker 1: and kitchens was now tomato ketchup, but also in surpassing
Speaker 1: other condiments and sauces in popularity in general, and Smith
Speaker 1: notes that in eighteen nine, an article in the New
Speaker 1: York Tribune called tomato ketchup America's national condiment and referred
Speaker 1: to the fact that it was found quote on every
Speaker 1: table in the land. So it sounds like by the
Speaker 1: turn of the twentieth century, tomato ketchup had reached a
Speaker 1: level of popularity close to what it enjoys today in
Speaker 1: the United States, but how it was used at the
Speaker 1: time I think was somewhat different. Smith reports that, in
Speaker 1: line with its traditionally uses up through the turn of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, the main uses for tomato ketchup included,
Speaker 1: quote as an ingredient for savory pies and sauces, and
Speaker 1: to enhance the flavor of meat, poultry, and fish. So
Speaker 1: I think it's more the idea that if your chicken
Speaker 1: is bland, you boost the flavor with some ummmy rich
Speaker 1: tomato ketchup. Or if your gravy is weak, you get
Speaker 1: some ketchup in there and the gravy and it will
Speaker 1: sort of boost the flavor a bit. If your weenies
Speaker 1: are lacking, you just add ketchup and grape jelly and
Speaker 1: cook him up. In a crock pot. What are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Like, that's like that's cocktail leenies, right? That
Speaker 1: really like the rape jelly. I didn't know that that
Speaker 1: was I believe that's the recipe. I remember seeing um
Speaker 1: and sort of being horrified by it. Seems like you'd
Speaker 1: want more ingredients in your your cocktail wheeny sauce. Well,
Speaker 1: do you know about curry? Worse? This German food that's
Speaker 1: it's basically little sausages cut up in catch up with
Speaker 1: curry powder. That's that's basically it. And this is something
Speaker 1: you make or something you purchase in a camp. I
Speaker 1: think it's like a German kind of fast food. I
Speaker 1: don't want to slander German cuisine, but well, I mean
Speaker 1: curry has is certainly another one of those flavors, flavor
Speaker 1: profiles that has conquered the world, becoming of basically curries,
Speaker 1: uh have become an essential part of English cuisine. Curries
Speaker 1: have become a very popular part of modern Japanese cuisine.
Speaker 1: Uh and and curry can be found, you know, throughout
Speaker 1: the United States in various cuisines. So you go into
Speaker 1: a traditional English chip shop, you'll find it. You know,
Speaker 1: you can get the tartar sauce, or you can get
Speaker 1: the curry sauce and a lot of them. So basically
Speaker 1: what you're getting at, though, is that the use of
Speaker 1: ketchup at the time was was more as as a
Speaker 1: catch all sauce and ingredients sauce. Yeah. Uh, And so
Speaker 1: I think it was later in the twentieth since that
Speaker 1: ketch up became most associated with what Smith calls it's
Speaker 1: three major host food. Can you guess what these are? Well,
Speaker 1: we've already touched on French fries, right and um, I
Speaker 1: mean the other big one that comes to mind is,
Speaker 1: of course the fast food hamburger. Of course, there you go,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Of course. The third one is the
Speaker 1: hot dog. This is controversial, and on one hand, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be that jerk that tells other people
Speaker 1: what to eat or how to eat, except right now.
Speaker 1: I always get that feeling about this one topic in particular,
Speaker 1: which is that if you're gonna eat a hot dog,
Speaker 1: hot dog has a very natural, heavenly soul mate and
Speaker 1: that soul made is mustard. Ketch Up on hot dogs
Speaker 1: seems like a strange betrayal to me. Yeah, well, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't have a real firm opinion. When
Speaker 1: I have a veggie dog these days, I tend to
Speaker 1: have mustard. Yeah, I tend to put sauer Kraud on it.
Speaker 1: Souer Krowd's a great choice. And I also like a
Speaker 1: little horse radish That seems stranger, but I'd be willing
Speaker 1: to try that. I've gotten to where I like horse
Speaker 1: radish on just about anything, like it's a good uh,
Speaker 1: it's a good good way to like spice it up
Speaker 1: and make sure I get that that blasting moment like
Speaker 1: like what I kind of poisoned myself where I don't
Speaker 1: know which bite it's going to be, but I know
Speaker 1: one of the bites I take of this veggie dog
Speaker 1: is going to make me go blind for a second. Well,
Speaker 1: I like that. I like the sound of that. Also, though,
Speaker 1: have you ever had horse radish on smoked fish based spreads,
Speaker 1: like on a like a smoked trout or or or
Speaker 1: like a baked salmon kind of spread. I don't know
Speaker 1: that I have. I mean, obviously I've had like the
Speaker 1: wasabi uh in in sushi, which you know that that's
Speaker 1: an example of the horse radish e type flavor going
Speaker 1: you know super well with with with fish flavors, so
Speaker 1: I imagine it would be amazing. It's very good. The
Speaker 1: local restaurant here in town, the General Mirror, is kind
Speaker 1: of like a New York Deli style place. They do
Speaker 1: like a baked salmon spread with horse radish on tops. Delicious.
Speaker 1: Speaking of putting sauer Kraut on dogs, though, I bet
Speaker 1: other traditions that are similar to Sauer Kraut, I would
Speaker 1: say kimchi would be amazing. A hot dog, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: kim chee is good on everything. But anyway, I guess
Speaker 1: one thing that we should realize from this history is
Speaker 1: that if there's one feature we most often think of
Speaker 1: as necessary for Ketchup, it probably is that it's a
Speaker 1: tomato based sauce. And this is just historically not the case. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's tomato based. Ketchup is a particularly popular variety of
Speaker 1: ketchup that achieved dominance over time. Now, we were already
Speaker 1: alluding to them earlier, but when you talk about Ketchup,
Speaker 1: you've got to talk about one big brand name, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: There're originally tons of different producers of Ketchup in general,
Speaker 1: and Tomato Ketchup specifically in the United States and in Britain.
Speaker 1: But in the early twentieth century, one company established itself
Speaker 1: as sort of the big troll in the arena, you know,
Speaker 1: the dominant player in tomato ketchup manufacturing and sales, and
Speaker 1: of course that was the Hines Company, Right. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is one of those situations where you might think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we just think of Hines because they're the mature company today.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's like, it's impossible to separate the
Speaker 1: history of ketchup from the separate from the history of Hines.
Speaker 1: Um Historian Gabriella Patrick points out that during the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: when Hines, uh, the Hines Company, you know, came to life,
Speaker 1: ketchup was made out of all the aforementioned ingredients, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, from the the anchovies to the mushrooms, but
Speaker 1: also grapes. That was an additional ingredient they included here.
Speaker 1: Uh she included here. So it's it's you know, also
Speaker 1: important to note that up until until Hines, this was
Speaker 1: not something you just, you know, exclusively boughted a store.
Speaker 1: Ketch Up was something that was also just made in
Speaker 1: the home and it you know, and it was no
Speaker 1: matter what the ingredients generally more of a watery substance.
Speaker 1: You know, this, this idea of like the thick catchup
Speaker 1: is is largely a product of of Hines and and
Speaker 1: we can largely look to Hines as the as the
Speaker 1: originator of this characteristic and they would go on to
Speaker 1: make a big deal about that thickness. I want to
Speaker 1: talk about that in a bit. So Hines focused in
Speaker 1: on tomato, sauce, sugar, vinegar, and spices, and then they
Speaker 1: made it thick. They made it as thick as you're
Speaker 1: probably accustomed to, thick in a way that it wasn't
Speaker 1: made in the home, and thick in a way that
Speaker 1: certainly lends itself to certain usages h that you know,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to get out of just you know,
Speaker 1: this watery substance. Yeah, it would be less appealing probably
Speaker 1: to say squired on top of a hot dog like
Speaker 1: it's watery. It would just kind of like soak into
Speaker 1: the bun maybe, but yeah, or to or to dip
Speaker 1: fries in for that matter. Um So it's J. Hines
Speaker 1: company had existed for decades and they've been selling tomato
Speaker 1: ketchup since eighteen seventy three, and Hines remained the largest
Speaker 1: producer of ketchup throughout the twentieth century, it was flanked
Speaker 1: by competitors like Hunts and del Monte. One interesting historical intersection,
Speaker 1: I thought is between the Hinz Company and a book
Speaker 1: that I was talking about in our summer reading episode
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blew Your Mind recently, uh and that
Speaker 1: that concerns the push for pure food and drug laws
Speaker 1: in the United States by the chemist Harvey Washington Wiley
Speaker 1: and others. Uh So, in nineteen o six, when the U.
Speaker 1: S Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, a
Speaker 1: lot of industrial food producers would have been using preservatives
Speaker 1: like formaldehyde and borax and stuff stuff that that Wiley
Speaker 1: was very against. And one major beneficiary of this act
Speaker 1: apparently was hind Since I was reading a New York
Speaker 1: Times article that mentions that they had a method to
Speaker 1: sterilize and bottle ketchup at scale without the use of
Speaker 1: toxic preservatives, and because they already had this method at
Speaker 1: a plant, I believe it was in Pennsylvania, um that
Speaker 1: they benefited from the passage of this law. All Right,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will continue our discussion
Speaker 1: of what is essentially the modern history of ketch up.
Speaker 1: All right, we're act So we've been talking about how
Speaker 1: in a way, tomato ketchup is already something that has
Speaker 1: a global culinary history. It came from Asian cuisine originally,
Speaker 1: and then was something that British cooks tried to recreate
Speaker 1: and then spread to America had tomatoes incorporated. But today
Speaker 1: tomato ketchup is not just a regional favorite condiment. It
Speaker 1: is a huge global manufacturing success. It spread to countries
Speaker 1: all over the world, especially alongside fast food franchises. And
Speaker 1: Andrew F. Smith notes that as of Americans purchased ten
Speaker 1: billion ounces of ketchup every year, which works out to
Speaker 1: about three full bottles for every person in the country.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of ketchup. That is that that is
Speaker 1: that's more than my household be well, that's that's more
Speaker 1: than my households, you know, purchase of ketchup bottles. But
Speaker 1: I don't know when you start looking at ketchup consumed elsewhere,
Speaker 1: maybe and maybe it is accurate, I'm not sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for for the whole world and not just a mirror
Speaker 1: a sales top eight hundred and forty million fourteen ounce
Speaker 1: bottles a year. Uh. The Hinz company alone claims that
Speaker 1: they sell six hundred and fifty million bottles of Ketchup
Speaker 1: a year. And they also claim, in addition to that,
Speaker 1: to sell eleven billion single serve plastic packets of Ketchup
Speaker 1: every year. That means about one point five Ketchup packets
Speaker 1: per human on Earth. Now, another fact about Hinz Ketchup specifically,
Speaker 1: we're all familiar with the Hinz Ketchup bottle, the glass
Speaker 1: bottle that's on the table at the restaurant. If you've
Speaker 1: ever fought the battle of reology against the slow pouring
Speaker 1: Ketchup stuck up in a in a glass Hines bottle.
Speaker 1: Apparently we were alluding to this earlier. The slow poor
Speaker 1: of Hinz Ketchup is something Hinz used to specifically boast
Speaker 1: about in ads for their product, resting on the logic
Speaker 1: that a thick, slow pouring Ketchup was you know, it's
Speaker 1: higher quality. It means it's made for more tomatoes. The
Speaker 1: interesting I could see how that messaging would stick to
Speaker 1: the you know the variance of the thick Ketchup. I mean,
Speaker 1: they've really got ads about it. I've got a link
Speaker 1: to one in here that's an old TV out of
Speaker 1: there is that's got this like jazz music playing, and
Speaker 1: they say, like for the slow poor I don't know
Speaker 1: if they were, like, were there fast pouring ketchups at
Speaker 1: the time that just didn't make the cut over. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing like your watery or ketchups, you know, the more
Speaker 1: essentially more traditional ketchups are coming out as a as
Speaker 1: a water um or also maybe it's a I wonder
Speaker 1: if there were cases where restaurants were cutting their ketch
Speaker 1: up with water. Yeah, that could be true. I wonder
Speaker 1: if some still do that. But so there was a
Speaker 1: claim made directly by the Hinz company that I found
Speaker 1: recently that they apparently still enforced slow poor is one
Speaker 1: of the quality control metrics of their ketchup. Quote ketchup
Speaker 1: exits the iconic glass bottle at point zero to eight
Speaker 1: miles per hour. If the viscosity of the ketchup is
Speaker 1: greater than the speed, the ketchup is rejected for sale.
Speaker 1: So this excited to about two point four six ft
Speaker 1: per minute or about one point to five centimeters per second.
Speaker 1: So they claim they reject a batch if it flows
Speaker 1: faster than that, but what if it flows slower? Also,
Speaker 1: at what temperature? So many reeology questions about Ketchup. Well,
Speaker 1: I I I imagine these are insider details that that
Speaker 1: the ketchup testers would be privy to. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: What happens and we've all had this experience or well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if everyone does, because now we have
Speaker 1: so many score bottles of Ketchup, But I I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of that that experience where you're trying
Speaker 1: to get the catchup out of the bottle and it
Speaker 1: won't come out. What are you supposed to do? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Hines claims, if you're trying to get the ketchup out
Speaker 1: of the glass bottle and it's stuck, the best method
Speaker 1: to get it flowing is to apply a firm tap
Speaker 1: to the spot on the neck of the bottle where
Speaker 1: there's there was a number fifty seven embossed on the glass. Now,
Speaker 1: I was looking at an article here that that also
Speaker 1: deals with the the the inside business of ketchup production
Speaker 1: at hinz uh npr is All things considered ran a
Speaker 1: great story just earlier this year titled Meet the Man
Speaker 1: who Guards America America's Ketchup by by Dan Charles. He's
Speaker 1: like the Night at the end of the last crusade.
Speaker 1: You know who's their stint is I have waited for
Speaker 1: you to come and take the ketchup recipe, but you
Speaker 1: must be worthy, yes, And that that individual is uh
Speaker 1: kraft Heinz ketchup Master. That's his title, Hector azorn No
Speaker 1: and that's what that's who. The story deals with profiles
Speaker 1: and it's a wonderful look at the modern state of ketchup.
Speaker 1: In Hinds global approach to catch up, um so as
Speaker 1: No points out that their ketchups taste has remained constant.
Speaker 1: The Hinds taste has remained constant, but the exact recipe
Speaker 1: differs from market to market and this becomes This became
Speaker 1: an issue a few years ago, apparently, as they had
Speaker 1: to come up with a recipe to satisfy all of Europe,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that Germans prefer a ketchup with more
Speaker 1: of a vinegary taste and the British prefer of hip
Speaker 1: with more of a spicy taste. And while uh osor
Speaker 1: No doesn't spill any secrets, he points out that the
Speaker 1: American recipe had to change at one point in the
Speaker 1: recent past to reflect shifts in well, he's not very
Speaker 1: specific shifts in flavor, shifts in ingredients. Yeah, it sounds
Speaker 1: like there was a recipe change in order to course
Speaker 1: correct after some unintended shift in flavor of the American
Speaker 1: version over time. And I wonder what that would be.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they weren't changing the ingredients, but the
Speaker 1: flavor of the ketchup was changing, I would have to
Speaker 1: think that would be due to the changing flavor of
Speaker 1: the tomatoes that were going into it, because you wouldn't
Speaker 1: expect like the vinegar or the sugar or anything to
Speaker 1: be changing flavor. Yeah, and tomato crops are certainly susceptible
Speaker 1: to a number of factors, and ultimately their flavor is
Speaker 1: is subject to these factors, and then includes emerging diseases,
Speaker 1: nitrogen rates, and of course climate. And then you have
Speaker 1: post harvest decisions as well regarding storage and transport that
Speaker 1: could contentially factor into it. I mean, it's it's easy
Speaker 1: to think about the simplicity of Ketchup, but it's certainly
Speaker 1: when you're talking about a massive company creating Ketchup for
Speaker 1: the world, that is a complex operation with a lot
Speaker 1: of moving parts. And and so it's no surprise that
Speaker 1: Hines really impacted American commercial agriculture and food processing in general. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a there's an article on smithsonian dot com from
Speaker 1: by Amy Bentley titled how ketchup revolutionized how food has grown, processed,
Speaker 1: and regulated from and I want to read a quick
Speaker 1: quote from it. Quote Innovations and tomato breeding and mechanical
Speaker 1: harvester technologies, driven in part by demand for the condiment,
Speaker 1: helped define modern industrial agriculture. In the nineteen sixties. You see,
Speaker 1: data scientists developed a mechanical tomato harvester around the same time,
Speaker 1: plant geneticists perfected a tomato with a thick skin and
Speaker 1: a round shape that could withstand machine harvesting and truck transport.
Speaker 1: This new tomato was arguably short on taste, but the
Speaker 1: perfect storm of breeding and harvesting technology from which it
Speaker 1: emerged allowed for a steady supply of tomatoes that kept
Speaker 1: bottlers and canners and business. Nearly all of the tomatoes
Speaker 1: produced for sauces and ketchup are products of this moment,
Speaker 1: as are many other fruits and vegetables produced in the US.
Speaker 1: So think about that. The invention of Hinds tomato ketchup
Speaker 1: by food scientists lead to essentially the reinvention of the
Speaker 1: tomato itself. Yeah, and you see this come through. I mean,
Speaker 1: have you ever wondered why if you get a tomato
Speaker 1: with the grocery store it tastes nothing like a really
Speaker 1: amazing heirloom tomato grown in a garden or by you know,
Speaker 1: by a small farmer or something like. The garden tomato
Speaker 1: has so much more flavor. It's it's unbelievable the difference.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of that has to do
Speaker 1: with facts about what kinds of you know, what is
Speaker 1: selected for when you're creating a grocery store tomato, which
Speaker 1: is probably similar to and in streel tomato. It's tomatoes
Speaker 1: that have to be able to survive the harvesting and
Speaker 1: transport process and then be appealing in whatever form they're
Speaker 1: they're sold. And so, for example, like tomatoes you buy
Speaker 1: the grocery store are probably a big thing that's being
Speaker 1: selected for in the breeding process. Is just them not
Speaker 1: getting crushed in being harvested in shipped to the store. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you have given up on tomatoes, you think
Speaker 1: you don't like tomatoes, and you're basing that mostly on
Speaker 1: grocery store tomatoes, then you really should try. You have
Speaker 1: you know, you have the opportunity to, you know, try
Speaker 1: an heirloom tomato, try a farmer's market tomato and uh
Speaker 1: and and see if that doesn't give you something a
Speaker 1: little different. I will say, also a very good compromise
Speaker 1: if you you know, a lot of people don't have
Speaker 1: they can't make it out to the farmer's market, or
Speaker 1: it's not the right time of year or whatever. If
Speaker 1: you're looking for a compromise, try cherry tomatoes, a little
Speaker 1: grape tomatoes. I think those tend to be the best
Speaker 1: variety of tomato that you can get at a large
Speaker 1: scale grocery store. So, speaking of grocery stores today, hind
Speaker 1: cells about seventy of America's ketchup and yes the product
Speaker 1: is largely a monolith. But but they and other ketchup
Speaker 1: makers have shaken things up. They've experimented with new concepts,
Speaker 1: and a big part of this is that the very
Speaker 1: international world that catch Up emerged from has kind of
Speaker 1: come back to challenge it in some ways. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: they're you know and in some cases that these products
Speaker 1: are very ketch up like in their profile. I mean,
Speaker 1: consider a Blessed Siracha sauce or holy uh gocha jong
Speaker 1: sauce the Korean ketchup like sauce. I love guchu jong.
Speaker 1: I love it. Yes, it's it's it's so good. I've
Speaker 1: been using it. And I started off, of course, just
Speaker 1: using it, you know, like on a beben bob kind
Speaker 1: of a bowl, But now I keep using it on
Speaker 1: things that, uh, that are not even necessarily Korean, just
Speaker 1: because it's just it's so good and and it is
Speaker 1: kind of like Korean catchup. In fact, if you do
Speaker 1: an Amazon search for quote Korean catchup, you will bring
Speaker 1: up tons of goguchan uh and as well as a
Speaker 1: sponsored hynds at at the very top. You know, here,
Speaker 1: here's one good thing you can make in your home.
Speaker 1: If you want something really exciting to dip your tater
Speaker 1: tots in or whatever, just make yourself some go chu
Speaker 1: jong mannaise. Yeah, mix it up together. And then there
Speaker 1: are also changes to what you know and what we
Speaker 1: want out of ingredients in our processed foods. So I
Speaker 1: feel like when I was a kid, you know, you're
Speaker 1: pretty much guaranteed that your your hinds catch up or
Speaker 1: your any kind of catchup you would buy off the
Speaker 1: shelf was probably gonna have high fruit dose, corns are
Speaker 1: up in it, and uh, you know, the consumer demands
Speaker 1: have shifted in many ways away from that. So just
Speaker 1: a qui quick glance at high at the Hinds website,
Speaker 1: you'll see that they have a number of varieties available.
Speaker 1: You can get your no salt added, you know, sugar added,
Speaker 1: you're organic, you're simply catch up, which is a no
Speaker 1: GMO ingredients, no high fruits, corns or version of the product.
Speaker 1: They have a honey and reduced sugar sweetened version. They
Speaker 1: have an added veggie version that is percent added veggies
Speaker 1: they claim with carrots and butternut squash um, which is
Speaker 1: in right, getting away from the idea of just tomatoes,
Speaker 1: will be sneaking some other vegetables in there. And then
Speaker 1: they also have hot and spicy jalapeno and siracha tomato ketchup?
Speaker 1: Do they make one out of oysters and walnuts and mushrooms?
Speaker 1: Not yet, but who knows, you know, maybe like the
Speaker 1: Heinz Britain will be will be the next big brand
Speaker 1: and school ketchup. Yeah, and then of course there are
Speaker 1: those ketchup slices we mentioned earlier. I'm sorry, I shouldn't, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're fine. I would try I have just
Speaker 1: had not I've not had the opportunity to try one. Now.
Speaker 1: In terms of the future of Ketchup, well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's hard to predict everything with ketchup. I mean, look
Speaker 1: at the robot catchers see cyborg catchip, nano ketch failing. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: we've already taken ketchup, as well as mustard in various
Speaker 1: other condiments into space, uh, into you know, lo g environments,
Speaker 1: orbital environments and uh and it really makes sense because
Speaker 1: it takes salt and pepper. For instance, you can have
Speaker 1: salt and pepper on your food in space, but it
Speaker 1: has to be in the liquid form. You can't have
Speaker 1: a you can't have a grind your own pepper and space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be it would be a risk to the environment,
Speaker 1: you know, to the machinery. You might never have thought
Speaker 1: about this as one of the weird things about eating
Speaker 1: food in space, but food does not fall in space.
Speaker 1: So like, you can't put something on your food by
Speaker 1: like just dumping it out on top liquids. You have
Speaker 1: to get them to adhere to your food if you
Speaker 1: want them to stick. And therefore a thick catchup is
Speaker 1: ideal for a log or zero G environment. I mean
Speaker 1: in a in a sense, catch up uh was destined
Speaker 1: to go into space. It foretold space travel in sum respects.
Speaker 1: So it's it's reasonable to assume ketchup will continue to
Speaker 1: follow us into space and to other planets even and
Speaker 1: to flavor the spice milage. Yeah, However, here on Earth, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we're dealing with challenges here, you know, different challenges,
Speaker 1: you know, but challenges such as a changing climate warming Earth,
Speaker 1: and so companies like hinzuh and and and other and
Speaker 1: really have any major agricultural group or having to turn
Speaker 1: to sustainability efforts to deal with it. And then there
Speaker 1: and then their additional sustainability efforts that uh, that others
Speaker 1: are urging them to take on. I was looking at
Speaker 1: how climate change is impacting an American icon hines Ketchup,
Speaker 1: which was from Harvard Business Schools HBS Digital Initiative from
Speaker 1: and basically it discusses how ketchup depends on tomatoes, and
Speaker 1: tomatoes are subject to crop shortages and uh the resulting
Speaker 1: increased costs as well as the challenges of decreased water availability.
Speaker 1: So basically they point out, yeah, Companies like Hins have
Speaker 1: a number of sustainable sustainability initiatives already in place, and
Speaker 1: they can stand to uh take a few more, uh
Speaker 1: in order to safeguard the world's you know, catch up
Speaker 1: reserves for a future that is going to deal with,
Speaker 1: you know, a rapidly changing climate. I can imagine global
Speaker 1: catch up shortages having uh profound negative effects. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: in terms of flavor, though, I don't know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of kind we already see, uh, you know, a diversification
Speaker 1: of ketchup to a certain extent. You know, I mentioned
Speaker 1: the examples from the Hinds website, So I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll see, Maybe we'll see you know, more savory catchups,
Speaker 1: maybe return of more vinegar based catch ups. Maybe those
Speaker 1: will become more trendy. Let's see what's gonna be made
Speaker 1: more abundant climate change, Maybe algae algae based catch up.
Speaker 1: But also another thing to keep in mind is if
Speaker 1: if we're talking about like changes in you know, the
Speaker 1: foods that we have available to ourselves as we're forced
Speaker 1: to consider, say more insect based protein sources, like that
Speaker 1: sounds like a place for ketchup if you ask me,
Speaker 1: you know, um, well, in in getting picky kids used
Speaker 1: to new foods. They they say, ketchup can be helpful.
Speaker 1: And so maybe if the adults of America are the
Speaker 1: picky kids you're trying to get used to intom feje uh,
Speaker 1: ketchup could play a role there. Yeah, I mean thinking
Speaker 1: if you're if you're if I say in the future,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to eat more bugs, and you think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: then let me rephrase that in the future, we'll have
Speaker 1: to eat more bugs with ketchup. In the future there
Speaker 1: will be various protein based shapes that you can dip
Speaker 1: in ketchup. Yeah, I mean that sounds fine. I mean
Speaker 1: that's basically what we have now at most. This is
Speaker 1: always my argument for um, certainly imitation meats, but also
Speaker 1: for insect based protein uh substances, is that we already
Speaker 1: have a situation where the meat has a very ambiguous flavor,
Speaker 1: if it even has a flavor at all, and then
Speaker 1: we're depending so heavily on the fact that it's fried,
Speaker 1: on the fact that it's then dipped and catch up
Speaker 1: or you know, some other sauce but probably catch up.
Speaker 1: Then you know, why why not have a more sustainable
Speaker 1: substance at the heart of that why does the why
Speaker 1: is the burger? And then many of these cases need
Speaker 1: to be made from a cow, given the environmental costs
Speaker 1: all of that cow, when it could be it could
Speaker 1: be anything, because the burger, the fast food burger, just
Speaker 1: really does not depend upon the flavor of the patty.
Speaker 1: Say hello to the cricket, Big Mac. Yeah. And really
Speaker 1: this gets back to the the the ancient history of
Speaker 1: the sauce. Thinking of the sauce not so much as
Speaker 1: this luxury, as this thing that makes a nice thing nicer,
Speaker 1: but perhaps the thing that can make an unpleasant thing edible,
Speaker 1: you know, or or you know, something that is going
Speaker 1: to add not just a fun spice, but a necessary
Speaker 1: spice to life. All right. So there you have it,
Speaker 1: the invention of catch up now obvious slee Uh. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from listeners about this episode because most
Speaker 1: of you have probably had ketchup and uh and and
Speaker 1: many of you have been exposed to perhaps strange users
Speaker 1: of ketchup in your own life, or you've traveled around
Speaker 1: and you've got to try. Maybe you have some experience
Speaker 1: sampling ketchups in different markets, in different countries. I want
Speaker 1: to hear from the people who have never had ketchup.
Speaker 1: I never tried it one right in. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's possible. I would love to hear from that
Speaker 1: human being. Um, but I will be surprised when we
Speaker 1: actually hear from them. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Invention, head on over
Speaker 1: to invention pod dot com. And yeah they're some of
Speaker 1: these are food based, but we have most for more
Speaker 1: technology based. Though, as we've discussed here, you cannot discuss
Speaker 1: the history of food without discussing the history of technology.
Speaker 1: Food preparation is a human technology. Food is technology. Is
Speaker 1: not not technology just because you eat it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's the product of technology at least I
Speaker 1: don't know. Uh, depends how you a part of the terms.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, we've had a we've had a
Speaker 1: few food related topics. So we have the episode on
Speaker 1: shop sticks, of course, on pooping automata, yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: I imagine we'll return to do other food based topics
Speaker 1: in the future. We did bread and toast. Bread and toast, yes,
Speaker 1: another key key advancement in human culinary technology, and now
Speaker 1: we have catch up to put on top of that. Um.
Speaker 1: But Hey, if you want to support this show, the
Speaker 1: best thing you can do is make sure you have subscribed,
Speaker 1: and wherever you get the show, make sure you have
Speaker 1: rated and reviewed it, because that helps us out as well.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us to let us know feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: to let us know that you've never once tried catchup,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of
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