Ketchup as a relish far pre-dates the tomato sauce we know today. Spicy fish sauce made with anchovies, mushrooms, walnuts and kidney beans was a predominant part of the Chinese meal for several centuries. The Indonesians made a sauce version called “ke-tsiap”, a Hokkien Chinese word which denotes the name of a sauce prepared with fermented fish. This sauce travelled to Southeastern China where the British must have encountered with it. The KE-TSIAP was brought to England by the British seamen around the late 17th and early 18th centuries. 17th century. They tried to replicate this fermented sauce. As the sauce evolved, so did its name to “catchup” and finally transformed to “ketchup”. The British “ketchup” comprised shallots, vinegar, white wine, sweet spices, black pepper and lemon peel. The base used for this relish was anchovies and thus the British ketchup remained a fish sauce.
The “tomato” to the “ketchup” was introduced by the Americans and its first recipe was published in 1801 by Sandy Addison. The American ketchup boom slowly crept into all parts of the world leaving the British fish sauce behind. This innovation also saw an escalation in the ketchup manufacturing tribe. But it was Henry Heinz in 1872 who stole the show when he added the tomato sauce to his line of pickled products. His product sales soared high and this was mainly due to his marketing strategy– A cunning advertising pointing out that the Heinz ketchup would free the homemakers from the drudgery of sauce preparation in their homes.
Sharing this “sauce” history makes me nostalgic. It takes me back to my childhood days in the city of Hyderabad, in India. The moment the price of tomatoes would touch 50 paise or 1 rupee my mother a great culinary expert would start preparations. Our live – maid and her entire family would be roped in to clean the old bottles under the eagle eye of my mother. The bottles would be sterilised in large brass vessels and set aside. The house will be full of “ketchup” excitement, that we three sisters would loath going to school and college lest we miss out on the fun. On Sunday the entire family would pile into our car with my father at the driving wheel and we would be off to the vegetable “mandi” /market to buy the tomatoes. Several kilos would be chosen and brought home. My mother would permit the 3 of us sisters in the pre-preparation. Soon the heady smell of the cooking sauce would permeate the house and neighbors’ too. Finally the time to bottle the delicious ketchup…. One of us would carefully hold a funnel to at the mouth of the ketchup and my mother would pour the Ruby red, fragrant ketchup into the bottles. Care would be taken to place the bottles on a wooden plank while bottling to prevent the bottles from cracking.
Smiles on all our faces and all our menus for the next couple of weeks would include tomato sauce
Good times… Great memories
