Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum here. Ketchup is an all American condiment, a
Speaker 1: reliable presence at cookouts, on diner tables, and in packets
Speaker 1: at the bottom of fast food bags. As of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six, some eighty four percent of US households have
Speaker 1: a bottle kicking around. But this condiment had thousands of
Speaker 1: years of history before it came to us. The earliest
Speaker 1: recipes are from ancient China. Ketchup traveled to Europe during
Speaker 1: the era of colonization. By the end of the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: it was a British staple enjoyed by folks like Jane Austen,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't the condiment you might know. Ketchups of
Speaker 1: the time were thin, spiced sauces made with various main
Speaker 1: ingredients like anchovies, walnuts, or celery, but not tomato. Tomato
Speaker 1: ketchup was probably an American innovation in the early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: but only became really entrenched after the Civil War. Originally,
Speaker 1: these ketchups were often used as ingredients in other sauces,
Speaker 1: in dishes like savory pies, or in bastes for meat, fish,
Speaker 1: and poultry during cooking, much like barbecue sauce. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until the early twentieth century the ketchup was reinvented as
Speaker 1: a condiment when hot dogs, hamburgers, and French fries entered
Speaker 1: the American diet, and when Hines used tomato ketchup to
Speaker 1: help fuel a movement that would result in the founding
Speaker 1: of the US Food and Drug Administration. Today, let's talk
Speaker 1: about all things ketchup. Savory sauces or pastes made by
Speaker 1: salting and fermenting things like fish or soybeans go back
Speaker 1: at least two to three thousand years in cultures all
Speaker 1: over the world. It was a way to preserve some
Speaker 1: of the nutrition and flavor of bountiful foods for leaner times.
Speaker 1: Things like Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, miso, and Vietnamese fish
Speaker 1: sauce are all descendants of these ancient products. Historians think
Speaker 1: we got the word ketchup from a similar Ish Chinese
Speaker 1: term meaning a brine of pickled fish. The ketchup was
Speaker 1: first recorded in English in the sixteen eighties by British sailors,
Speaker 1: traders and colonists. In Southeast Asia who were introduced to
Speaker 1: local savory sauces and really liked them. By the seventeen forties,
Speaker 1: English recipe books were awash with ketchups. These were thin,
Speaker 1: dark sauces made with lots of posh spices like ginger, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemon, peel,
Speaker 1: and black pepper, all mixed with vinegar or maybe white wine,
Speaker 1: and steeped with some kind of main ingredient that needed
Speaker 1: to get used up, things like oysters, anchovies, walnuts, plums,
Speaker 1: or mushrooms. Jane Austen preferred mushroom ketchup. The sauces would
Speaker 1: be allowed to sit for a few days to a
Speaker 1: few weeks to ferment, and would then be strained and bottled. Meanwhile, tomatoes,
Speaker 1: which are native to the Americas, were becoming part of
Speaker 1: European and colonial cuisines. The first known recipe for tomato
Speaker 1: ketchup was published in eighteen twelve by a Philadelphia doctor
Speaker 1: and horticulturist by the name of James Nice. He called
Speaker 1: tomatoes love apples, based on the French term for the
Speaker 1: produce of palms d'ye moor. Tomatoes and their etymology whole
Speaker 1: different episode anyway, tomatoes and ketchup made from them became
Speaker 1: something of a health craze in the US over the
Speaker 1: next few decades, and some companies tried to commercialize tomato ketchup.
Speaker 1: But we didn't have really reliable sterilization or canning technology yet,
Speaker 1: so those products and their preservatives weren't actually very good
Speaker 1: for you. Enter Henry J. Hines. Hines was a businessman
Speaker 1: out of Pittsburgh who had gotten his start bottling and
Speaker 1: selling horseradish around the early eighteen seventies. He teamed up
Speaker 1: with one doctor, Harvey Washington Wilie, who helped him create
Speaker 1: clean manufacturing processes and quality control, and hired a food
Speaker 1: scientist to tweak his recipes. Together, they came up with
Speaker 1: a ketchup made from ripe red tomatoes with spices and
Speaker 1: a lot of salt, vinegar, and sugar as preservatives. By
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties, Hines had a big condiment business going,
Speaker 1: with at least fifty seven varieties of products, though that
Speaker 1: exact number was probably just a random marketing thing. Hines
Speaker 1: was a progressive boss. In the late eighteen hundreds, he
Speaker 1: was giving his factory employees free access to medical and
Speaker 1: dental care on site emergency care and life and death insurance.
Speaker 1: The company provided uniforms, laundry service, washrooms, and on site
Speaker 1: manicures to make sure employees came to the line clean.
Speaker 1: The Pittsburgh had a swimming pool, jim and rooftop garden
Speaker 1: like I sort of want to go bottle ketchup. In
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds in Pennsylvania, Hines was also marketing
Speaker 1: this modern manufacturing process. He opened his factories to public tours.
Speaker 1: He sold his products in clear glass bottles. He hired
Speaker 1: traveling salesmen to display Hines products in local grocery stores
Speaker 1: and espouse the quality of these foods. They were expensive,
Speaker 1: but more pure and amidst all of this, doctor Wilie,
Speaker 1: who by the turn of the century was the chief
Speaker 1: chemist at the Federal Bureau of Chemistry, was on a
Speaker 1: campaign to bring pure foods to the people by regulating
Speaker 1: the increasingly industrial food supply. At that point, we didn't
Speaker 1: have national consumer protection laws in place concerning food or drugs.
Speaker 1: Producers didn't have to follow sanitation procedures, or label things
Speaker 1: accurately or list their ingredients. There was growing public concern
Speaker 1: about manufactured foods being adulterated or contaminated, and doctor Wilie
Speaker 1: went on speaking tours railing against big business cost cutters
Speaker 1: as the hosts of Satan and promoting a pure Food
Speaker 1: Act as necessary for the survival of the human race.
Speaker 1: This is ostensibly an episode about ketchup. Hines was a
Speaker 1: big supporter of a pure Food Act. Of course, they
Speaker 1: were already a corporate leader in sanitary manufacturing conditions. They
Speaker 1: were ahead of the game there, but they also wanted
Speaker 1: to help inspire greater public confidence in commercially prepared foods.
Speaker 1: These issues had been simmering for decades, but then Upton
Speaker 1: Sinclair's The Jungle came out in February of nineteen oh six,
Speaker 1: revealing highly unsafe and unsanitary conditions in the meat packing industry.
Speaker 1: It caused an uproar, and the Pure Food and Drug
Speaker 1: Act passed in June that year. It proper labeling of
Speaker 1: ingredients on packaging and paved the way for the Food
Speaker 1: and Drug Administration to be created. Heine's business and their
Speaker 1: Ketchup boomed by nineteen oh eight that sold two point
Speaker 1: five million dollars worth of tomato based ketchup as it
Speaker 1: became more popular alternate ingredient ketchups and home recipes faded
Speaker 1: away in the US, though you can still find them
Speaker 1: in other places. For example, the Philippines favors banana based ketchup.
Speaker 1: But okay, we have to talk about the science of
Speaker 1: ketchup and specifically how it flows or sometimes fails to flow.
Speaker 1: A lot of technology over the years has gone into
Speaker 1: getting ketchup out of its containers and onto your food.
Speaker 1: This roots from the fact that ketchup is what's called
Speaker 1: a non Newtonian fluid. Let's unpack that a Newtonian fluid
Speaker 1: is one that has a viscosity, that is, a thickness
Speaker 1: or resistance to flow related only to its temperature. Water
Speaker 1: and oil are Newtonian fluids because pressure and agitation don't
Speaker 1: affect the rate at which they flow, which is to
Speaker 1: say that no matter how hard you shake water, it
Speaker 1: always flows the same way. Viscosity is different than density.
Speaker 1: Think of pouring honey versus cream into a cup of tea.
Speaker 1: Honey is more viscous and more dense than water. It
Speaker 1: takes longer to pour and it's heavier. You put it
Speaker 1: in tea and it'll sink. Cream is more viscous but
Speaker 1: less dense. It takes longer to pour than water, but
Speaker 1: it floats in tea or at least mixes in anyway.
Speaker 1: Unlike water and other Newtonian fluids, non Newtonian fluids are
Speaker 1: affected by pressure and agitation. Think about quicksand we all
Speaker 1: thought about quicksand right, it's about twice as dense as
Speaker 1: you are, meaning that you can float on it, but
Speaker 1: only if you don't struggle. If you struggle in quicksand
Speaker 1: you agitate it and thus make it less viscous, and
Speaker 1: you'll sink. That's why you should stay calm and move
Speaker 1: slowly if you ever get trapped in quicksand or in toothpaste,
Speaker 1: or in ketchup. More practically, though, you can put this
Speaker 1: to use when you're trying to get ketchup out of
Speaker 1: a glass bottle. It's so viscous that it gets jammed
Speaker 1: up at the bottle's neck a butt. By applying agitation,
Speaker 1: that is, sheer stress to the ketchup in the neck,
Speaker 1: you can make it less viscous and it'll flow faster.
Speaker 1: If you've got a bottle of Hinds, you do that
Speaker 1: by tapping the neck of the bottle right on the
Speaker 1: fifty seven label. For any other brand. It's right around
Speaker 1: halfway up the neck. The reason that tapping the bottom
Speaker 1: of the bottle doesn't work is because that only affects
Speaker 1: the viscosity of the ketchup at the bottom, and that's
Speaker 1: not where the problem is. Plastic squeeze bottles for Ketchup
Speaker 1: were unveiled in nineteen eighty three, but tended to overshoot
Speaker 1: the problem. The upside down squeeze bottles that debuted in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two from both Hinds and Hunts, its
Speaker 1: main us competitor, incorporate a clever silicone valve in the
Speaker 1: lid to fix this problem. The valve has slits arranged
Speaker 1: at right angles to each other, so they part when
Speaker 1: you apply pressure via a squeeze to the bottle, and
Speaker 1: then seal back up neatly when relaxed. The caps also
Speaker 1: feature grooves that capture watery Ketchup juice and prevent it
Speaker 1: from squirting out. Instead, it gets mixed back into the
Speaker 1: body of the ketchup. However, it's packaged. Americans do devour
Speaker 1: tomato Ketchup, but where not it's number one fans per capita,
Speaker 1: Finland and Canada seem to be competing for who can
Speaker 1: consume the most. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: how Ketchup Works on how stuffworks dot Com written by
Speaker 1: Melanie Redzeegy McManus, and on an episode of my other
Speaker 1: podcast Saver called The Saucy History of Ketchup. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot Com and is produced by Tyler klang A. Four
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.