The Zen of Ketchup (a.k.a. catsup)

Most barbecue sauces contain ketchup, and really, when you think about it, most tomato based barbecue sauces are just a form of pumped up ketchup. Ketchup is made by reducing ripe tomatoes, sans skins and seeds, to a thick paste, and adding vinegar, sweetener, herbs, and spices.

But ketchup did not always contain tomatoes! The word ketchup probably comes from Kê-tsiap a Cantonese word that meant "fish pickled in brine." It contained no tomatoes and was probably more like soy sauce or Chinese fish sauce. Slather some of that on your burgers, bucko. Yummmm.

The first ketchup recipes were published in England in the 1720s. Elizabeth Smith’s recipe in "The Compleat Housewife" used anchovies, shallots, vinegar, white wine, pepper, lemon peel, and brown spices (cloves, ginger, mace, and nutmeg). Another recipe was published around the same time by Richard Bradley in "The Country Gentleman’s and Farmer’s Monthly Director." It contained port wine, the juice of boiled mushrooms, mace, and cloves and was rally just a red wine sauce. Thin and translucent mushroom ketchups became quite common and popular.

Other early ketchups contained walnuts, apples, blackberries, peaches, oysters, and eventually, tomatoes and vinegar. Then, as now, they were used to flavor meats and other sauces.

Heinz introduced its tomato ketchup in 1875 and its recipe has become a standard for all ketchups. In fact, by law, all American ketchups contain tomatoes, vinegar, sweeteners, salt, spices, and herbs. Yes, the definition of ketchup is defined in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, Volume 2, Part 155, Section 194 (21CFR155.194). You can look it up.

And for the record, tomatoes, botanically, are fruits, not vegetables, even though, in 1981, under President Ronald Reagan, in a bureaucratic bumble, the USDA attempted to classify ketchup as a vegetable when served in school lunch programs. The whole thing blew up with a little help from the Democrats, especially after Reagan’s agriculture secretary, John Block, attempted to defend the new rules.

Although there are slight differences in flavor, Heinz and Hunt's are interchangeable in my recipes.

This page was revised 9/11/2009