From the Vault: The Invention of Ketchup

You love it. You put it on everything. But where does ketchup come from? In this classic episode of Invention, Robert and Joe explore the mysterious origins of everyone’s favorite sweet red sauce -- and consider the jaw-dropping fact that ketchup isn’t always red and isn’t always made from tomatoes. (originally published 9/29/19)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today
is not a normal Vault day, but to help us
get through a few things this week, we're bringing you
a vault episode. But it's a really good one. This
is an episode of the Invention podcast that we did
about the invention of ketchup. If you never listened to Invention,

(00:26):
Rob and I did this whole other show for for
a few years while back called Invention. It was about inventions,
and this is one of my most fondly remembered explorations.
This episode originally published on September nineteen. Yeah. I think
about this episode every time I use catch up, and
I hope that you do as well. Oh, but also

(00:48):
never fear. We will be back with all all new
fresh content for you starting tomorrow and for the rest
of the week, so we'll see you then. Welcome to
Invention Action of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Invention.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

(01:09):
today we have a sweet episode for you. We have
a salty episode for you. We have a relatively slow
flowing kind of uh, kind of stachy episode for nice
thick episode for you, because today's episode is about catch up,
which I just want to go ahead and put it
out there. This is gonna be far more interesting, far

(01:29):
more complex, and in a little bit more confusing than
you might anticipate. You know. I was wondering if we
should start by confessing the strange things that we puld
catch up on, because you just assume everybody has some
strange thing they pould catch upon. But I realize I
am so boring when it comes to catch up. They
go on fries for French fries, I put it today.

(01:50):
These days, I put catch up on French fries if
I have them, and put them on tater tots if
I have them. Um, what else? That's those are the
main things really, Um. If I may king my own
cocktail sauce off, it's obviously I used ketchup as the
base for that. But yeah, aside from that, I didn't.
I don't think I ever had any strange ketchup habits

(02:10):
growing up. I would I think I would occasionally take
a baked potato and cut it up into rounds and
put ketchup on that with to the slightly slight disapproval,
I think of the rest of the table. But my
argument was, look, this is essentially the same as French fries.
We put ketch up on French fries. I'm just doing
this to my baked potato instead of covering it in
butter and sour cream and what have you. How about you, Seth,

(02:32):
do you put ketchup on soft serve? He says no.
My my son doesn't even put ketchup on anything. And
he's certainly at that age where you see a lot
of uh you know, strange ketchup or even sort of
catch up first strategies like one I've definitely seen before,
and maybe I did see him do this when he
was younger. I was like to take a French fry,

(02:54):
dip it in the catchup, lick the ketchup off the
French fry, get the French fry again, and essentially use
the French fry as a soggy delivery system for that
sweet uh you know, sweet and vinegary and salty uh
you know, overpowering taste profile that is ketchup. You know.
I was looking at the Hinz website earlier today and

(03:15):
I found one page where they were like they were
trying to, i think, advertise the benefits of ketchup beyond
just it tasting good. And they're like, you can use
ketchup to get your kids to eat healthy foods. Just
put ketchup on healthy foods and then they'll eat them.
And I was thinking, I don't know what, how exactly
does that work? And you put ketch up on spinach
and then they spinach, you put it on sweet potatoes,

(03:37):
and I don't know. Uh yeah, I mean, look, I
don't have a lot of room to to talk on
this because my my son is fortunately has always been
a very good eater. But I can imagine if you're
having if you're struggling just trying to get any food
uh into a young child, you would you would turn
to put and ketchup on just about anything to make
it happen. You know, we don't want to vilify ketchup

(03:58):
today because catchup already in many ways has a pretty
bad reputation, especially among foodies, and you know, people have
sophisticated palates. I think sometimes look at ketchup as a
thing that's just ruining the culinary world. It's it's worldwide
global homogeneity in in cuisine, uh, makes everything taste the same.
It just crushes individual flavor profiles of foods and signals

(04:22):
that like, you don't want to taste anything for itself. Yeah,
generally it's considered an insult to reach for or ask
for the catchup when you order something at a really
nice restaurant or even just a passively nice restaurant. Um,
unless of course, you have ordered the burger and fries
or some st a manner of fries and it comes with,
say a housemaid ketchup that is exclusively used for uh,

(04:46):
for dipping. But then again, you get French fries at
a at a nicer place, they're probably gonna have some
other dipping options that are also fantastic that deviate from
the standard ketchup trope smoked tomato, manna is or something. Yeah,
that's sort of thing. And certainly we have more condiment
possibilities available to us now because but but for the

(05:07):
longest like catch up, you know what, like that's what
we grew up with. You know that the ketchup is
what you got it all the fast food restaurants, and
today you go to just about any restaurant and there
will be ketch up there. Um, it's gonna be there
in pumps and bottles and packets, in slices even well,
I don't know how many restaurants who really leaning on

(05:27):
the ketchup slices, but ketchup slices do exist. Yeah, if
you haven't seen it, they're like the craft singles basically
up Basically, someone said, you know that, you know, the hardened,
dried ketchup that coagulates around the cap. What have I
had a whole slice of that? Wouldn't that be great?
I don't know, maybe it is great. I have not
tried it. But that's what we're gonna be talking about today,

(05:48):
is is the world of ketchup? Where does it come from?
What is it? And why? Why is it so potent?
Why is it so powerful? It's something we all take
for granted, but it has an interesting story. So what
is ketchup usually made of today? When you get tomato
ketchup in a bottle, your standard stuff, you know, not
the weird kind, just the standard ketchup you get at

(06:09):
the store, at the diner. When we think of ketchup,
and we think of that that thick red stuff you
squeeze out of a um, out of a bottle, you're
generally talking about tomato sauce, sugar or another sweetener, vinegar, salt,
and some sort of proprietary blend of spices and seasonings,
industrial additives, maybe preservatives, something like that. Yeah, and I

(06:32):
think commonly your tomato element and your sugar element are
probably going to be tomato paste and higher discorn sirrup. Yeah,
high frid discorn serrup has of course become the standards,
especially here in the United States. But that being said,
and as we'll touch on later, like you can find
a lot of ketchups on the market, including ones from
hines that that are sweetened, say with with a sugar

(06:56):
or honey or reduced sugar and honey. You know, there
are playing of other options out there now. When in
previous decades though, I think it was it was pretty
much you had the one choice, right right, So when
we when we dip a front fry and catch up
where we put ketch up on our you know, our
burgers are hot dogs or wantons, whatever you're you're putting

(07:16):
it on. You know, it brings that blessed sweet, sour
and salty taste to any bite. So it's it's potent stuff.
It delivers several things that we as organisms are hardwired
to crave uh and and crave it we do. That's
why you see some serious pump abuse sometimes at your
local fast food restaurants, you know, where they'll they'll they'll
fill up not one cup, not two, but maybe three

(07:37):
or four just to make sure they're they're covering all
their ground there, you know, they have all their options
available to them, or just pump it all over top
a big pile of fries. People do that. I'm not
of that school. I'm a dipper, not a drizzler. Yeah,
I prefer to because if it's drizzled, you're gonna end
up with that one French fry that is that is
drowned and lost to the catchup. Um. But then again,

(07:58):
I think that has a benefit it as you you know,
as many of us become a little wiser as we
get ahold, and we realized we should not eat all
the French fries better than some of the French fries
drowned and become inedible, than to actually polish off the
entire plate. But again, ketchup has a an overpowering at
times flavor profile uh and it goes really well with

(08:19):
certain things. Obviously, Uh, and it's and it's good to
have an overpowering flavor profile if you're eating something that is, say,
less than appetizing. Um. But it's certainly gonna insult the
chef if you reach for it when you're having, you know,
something that has a very delicate and planned out flavor
profile itself. And something I should say in addition to
so you mentioned that ketchup tends. It's got this trio

(08:41):
of flavors that we like in a lot of sauces.
It's got sweetness, it's got acidity or sourness, and it's
got saltiness. But it's also got this other thing that's
harder to define. It's the the umami flavor. It comes
from the tomatoes, for you know, from the tomatoes, from
the fermentation. Uh. It's this savory, you know, deliciousness kind
of quality that that's a little bit um. It's not

(09:04):
as sharper, as easily noticeable as the other three types
of flavors, but you really value it in many foods
that you like. And so it shouldn't become as a
surprise that, especially in the United States, it has become
such a popular condiment. I see that the number kind
of varies, but for instance, in a two thousand fourteen
article from on the National Geographic website, how was Ketchup Invented?

(09:24):
By Jasmine Wiggins Uh, the author sites nine seven percent
of American households report having a bottle of the stuff around.
That is a I mean, that's a huge number. That's
a huge number. I've seen it. I've seen it higher,
generally by ketchup companies, and I've also seen it a
little lower. But I mean, you know, without you know,

(09:44):
arguing over the exact number, like it is a very
widespread condiment, not only here but now you know, in
various places around the world. But yet, there was a
time before Ketchup. There was a time when there was
no Ketchup. And we're going to begin our journey by
by traveling back in time. Let's get some time travel
sound effects, can we can we blue blue, blue, bloup

(10:06):
or something? All right, Well, so we're traveling back. Yes,
we're seeking that time before Ketchup. Was there a time
before Ketchup? Yes? But also no, because I told you
this is gonna be a little more confused than you
might think, because in a large sense, we have to
consider the legacy of the condiment of the sauce itself
and to think about its inception. You know, what what

(10:29):
does it mean to put a sauce on something? Like?
What is what is ketchup itself? You know what is
what is it essentially doing? And it's pointed out in
Pure Ketchup, a History of America's National condiment with recipes
by Andrew F. Smith, who who will keep coming back
to because Andrew seems to be the one of the
primary authorities on the history of ketchup. He's like the

(10:52):
world Ketchup lore master. He's the l Rond or the
Saruman of ketchup. Yes, but according to Smith, humans have
attempted to preserve foods with salt for thousands of years.
It retards the growth of bacteria, and salt and water
used like this, you know, is known as brining Brian
something just right, and certain species of bacteria produce lactic acid,

(11:16):
which kills off harmful of that bacteria and lowers the
pH It also creates an environment suitable for fermentation, and
this changes the flavor this pickling. Yeah, and of course
we have pickling traditions in culture is just around the world,
and we could easily do an entire episode just on
pickling and food preserve preservation that I think we will. Yeah,

(11:36):
that that in and of itself is a is a
fascinating topic, especially when you get into all the varied
forms of it um from like burying a bunch of
dead birds in the earth. You know too well, the
earth does play a role in a number of different
fermentation uh uh strategies that were developed. The idea of
taking something, taking a few ingredients, bundling it away in

(11:56):
the darkness of the earth, and then bringing it back
up when you need it when the time of the
harvest has grown cold. But as as Smith points out,
fermented sauces were certainly used by ancient peoples to enhance
flavors in their food as well as and this is
key to hide unpleasant odors because you know, a lot
of times, especially in the ancient world or any time

(12:18):
prior to our our modern age of of of food
abundance and food waste. You know, you often had you
had what you had, and sometimes it might not smell
that pleasant or taste that pleasant, but it was what
was for dinner. Uh It was the meal, and you
had to choke it down one way or the other. Uh,
and so you might need to cover up the underlying

(12:41):
flavor or odor since when a bottle of catchup would
have come in real handy back then exactly, and they
didn't quite have ketchup certainly. But the Greeks and the
Romans used something called garum, Smith says, which was a
fermented fish sauce. It was itself a byproduct of salting
tons of foot fish as a means of preserving those fish.
And there are modern analogs of of garum. There's an

(13:03):
Italian cuisine. There's this stuff called colatura that's this you know,
salty fermented fish sauce flavor that's delicious. In Asian cuisines,
you've got various forms of fish sauce like nonpla oyster sauces, etcetera. Yeah, exactly.
So you take some seafood you'd heavily salted, and you
get an extract from it um that is this funky,

(13:23):
highly savory, ummi rich salty kind of thing, and it's great.
You know, that stuff is great, not just in the
you know, the cuisines it's traditionally associated with, but chefs
today use, for example, Asia Southeast Asian style fish sauce
in all kinds of things. You'll find chefs putting h
Thai fish sauce and beef stews and in chili and

(13:45):
bolonaise and everything anyway anywhere you want to like boost
the beefy flavor of food. And they vary a lot,
not only in their their flavor, but also in their consistency.
You know, some are very thick, there's a very watery uh.
And and I always anytime you visit um uh you know,
a new you know, Asian restaurant, do try all of

(14:06):
the sauces, especially the ones you are not familiar with,
just to get a good uh, you know, a good
you know, overall of the taste sensations available totally. So yes, obviously,
we have a wealth of pickling traditions from around the world.
Though it's a smith points out in the media, in
the medieval world, the medieval European world, the byproduct of
those pickling endeavors were often just discarded instead of being

(14:28):
reutilized as some sort of a sauce. Um and uh,
I have to say that my my son does not
adhere to this, as he loves to drink down the
pickle juice from the pickle jar. He'll drink down the
sardine oil from the sardine can uh he is, he does,
he does not waste any of it. Well, first of all,
I can sympathize because of course pickles are delicious and

(14:49):
and that liquid therefore is also somewhat delicious. But second,
this springs up. I don't even know if we should
get into this. This is we probably should. Okay, I
don't want to spend half an hour talking about this,
but I just had to mention my favorite article of
all time from my hometown newspaper, the Chattanooga Times Free Press,
hit Caught in a Pickle Chattanooga attorney common Friends explain

(15:13):
strange addiction, and it's about people who can't stop drinking
pickle juice. The main figure in this article is a
local lawyer who tells these stories about how when he's
driving home for more, he would stop at the grocery
store and he'd get a jar of pickles and take
him out to his car, and he dump all the
pickles out in the parking lot and just guzzle down
all the juice. But now he's figured out that the

(15:35):
smarter and more economical thing is just to buy jugs
of pickle juice like dill pickle juice by itself. You
can order it from I don't know, various manufacturers. I
guess some people just add their cucumbers straight to dill
pickle juice. But there are these accompanying photos on the
Times Free Press website of this guy posing with a
gallon jug of dill pickle Brin Stitches Award. Yes, I

(15:58):
love this this. I mean I've I've I've read articles
about like people who are such fermentation enthusiasts that they
and and sometimes they you know, they back this up
with arguments about the you know, the health benefits of
fermented products, and and they'll they'll sometimes take on like
a very fermentation heavy diet. But I also have heard
just anecdotal accounts so that I think my my aunt

(16:21):
was really into croud juice for for a long time
and maybe still is just just because she liked it
or for like like health remody kind of, I think
it was because she just like the flavor. Yeah, well
I love pickles too. I don't go that far, but yeah,
it reminds me that the Hannibal Burriss stand up comedy
debt where he's talking about saving the jar of pickles

(16:43):
pickle juice after all the pickles are gone, so that
he can flick it onto his grilled cheese sandwich. I
don't know this bit. It sounds smart. Yeah, Like basically
it's like it's it's a bit about roommates and not
wanting the roommate to throw out the pickle juice because
the pickles juice still has you use. It can still
be flicked onto And I think that that gets down

(17:04):
to what we're talking about here, Like, yes, the the
the resulting pickled juice is still still packs flavor. It
can still be used to enhance other foods. So even
though the you know, in the medieval uh European world,
people weren't that into saving their their food preparation juice
is uh still you had traditions of creating sauces. From

(17:25):
early Greek times onward. Europeans made sauces that were based
in large part on vinegar raging for ranging from the
simple to the complex, and they grew very complex in
Elizabethan Britain. UH. Sauce, after all is where we get
the the saucer from which is of course ends up
being so vitally connected with the t culture that grows

(17:46):
out of Britain. It's actually for sauce. I had no idea. Yeah,
this according to our ketchup expert Andrew Alright, well, I
don't mean this is a slam against British food, but
if you are sometimes going to be consuming i don't know,
say largely bland foods in your diet, sauces are clearly
going to become pretty popular. Yeah. Yeah, and uh. He

(18:08):
points out that in Robert may five book The Accomplished Cook, Uh,
the author list thirteen sauce categories, and each of those
sauce categories can contain upwards of a dozen different sauces
that you can make to say, put on your mutton. Yeah. Now,
I don't know how this lines up historically with the
French sauce tradition, but obviously that's a huge thing as well.

(18:30):
Like you know, the French have all these uh, French
high cuisine has this whole family system of sauces, like
sauces that you make, and then the sauces that are
derived from those sauces, the mother sauces, and the sauces
you make out of them. For example, you might make
like a French brown sauce, and then from that can
be derived these vinegar based changes. Uh, it's very complex.

(18:52):
So that's the the European theater roughly. But then also,
of course, you know, across across the continent, across eur Asia,
you have different traditions going on. Um, Assalted and fermented
fish sauces are an ancient part of Southeast Asia and
as well, and you know they're they're too were numerous

(19:13):
and varied in their flavor and consistency. For instance, in
in China, the soybean was domesticated uh by roughly eight
b c E. And eventually soy sauce springs from this,
one of the great sauces of of human creation, the
ultimate savory condiment. Yeah. And then uh, you know, eventually

(19:33):
the Western and Eastern kingdoms of the sauce eventually meet,
and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, British and European
sailors were introduced to and impressed by the various soy
and fish sauces and sauces that that they inevitably didn't
even really know, you know, what the ingredients were. They
just knew that when you put it on food, it
was amazing and they no doubt. Um, you know, we're

(19:56):
enthralled by the possibility of bringing these sauces back to
to spice up things at home that we're either bland
or had grown bland to their now you know, excited
palate and uh and yeah. So they encountered these things
on their voyages. Smith writes, quote from this culinary crucible assaulted,
pickled and fermented foods from ancient Europe and exotic Southeast Asia.

(20:20):
British ketchup materialized during the eighteenth century. All right, it's
time to take a Breakpool will be right back with
more on the history of ketchup. Alright, we're back, Okay, Joe,
who invented the ketchup? Was it Sir Carmichael Ketchup? Was it?
Was it Baron von ketch Up? There have been names

(20:42):
proposed by various food historians over the years, but these
these proposals are definitely wrong. Like we just know for
a fact, like we don't know the inventor of the
original ketchup. But as we've been explaining someone, the question
of ketchups inventors fraught anyway, because the sauce has evolved
so much over time. So where do you put the
inventor Ketchup seems to be a long lineage of copies

(21:06):
of copies of types of sauces. And so the origins
of ketchup bear very little resemblance to the sauce that's
sold under that name in most of the world today.
But nevertheless, we will do our best to trace the
origins of how that sauce came to be. So when
you think about the characteristics of ketchup, uh, Andrew F.
Smith points this out, and I think he's correct. You

(21:28):
try to think of the three main characteristics of ketchup,
but you probably think that it's something that's thick, something
that is sweet, and something that is made from tomatoes, right, yes,
And of course also just vitally red, like so red
that that it often in our comedies and uh, you
know cartoons. It is a substitute for human blood. Yes, uh.

(21:49):
And so the origins of ketchup possessed probably none of
these qualities at all. Not made from tomatoes, not sweet,
not thick, not red. Uh. And so in his book
in in Pure Ketchup and F. Smith relays a number
of competing theories about the origins of ketchup, most of
which we now know are almost definitely wrong. A lot
of the older origin stories lie in Europe, like, for example,

(22:13):
that ketchup comes from the English word cavitch, which is
a type of fish pickled in vinegar. This and the
idea that this is a cognate for the French term
escovetch a, which means like food and sauce for the
Spanish escabech a uh, this theory is now considered incorrect.
It seems generally agreed that ketchup, as we were saying
before the break, comes from some kind of tradition of

(22:36):
Asian cuisine. But while that's pretty well established, it gets
harder to pin down in more definite ways. In eighteen
seventy seven, somebody named Eneas Dallas speculated that the word
ketchup comes from a Japanese word keep job k I
T J A P. However, this does not seem to
be an actual Japanese word, or even a possible Japanese word,

(22:59):
that that formation does not come together in Japanese syllables. Um.
It's also been speculated to have come from a Melee
word k E C A P. I'm not sure how
that would have been pronounced, maybe catch up. However, this
also seems unlikely. I think among food historians the favorite
theory now, as originally put forth by the editors of

(23:19):
the Oxford English Dictionary, UH, seems to be that the
English word ketchup has Chinese origins, and that it really
comes from Kate's yap quote, a word from the Amoy
dialect of Chinese meaning the brine of pickled fish. So
this would give it a fish origin, though I've seen
other origins on mission. In a second Smith notes that

(23:39):
an ethnologist named Terry En de la Cooperie has argued
that while the word is Chinese, it does not appear
to have come from the Chinese mainland, and that the
scholar thinks it more likely emerged from Chinese speakers living
elsewhere in Southeast Asia, such as in Vietnam, and that
the British probably first came into contact with this sauce

(24:03):
and the name of this sauce somewhere in what is
today Indonesia. Now, I was also reading about the origins
of ketchup from the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink
in America, and that's from O U P edited by
Bruce Craig from the editors there. Oh also I should
say that the entry is by Andrew F. Smith, yet
again apparently just seems to be the ketchup master. But

(24:25):
this entry is more recent than his book, so I
would imagine it incorporates, you know, more recent sources and scholarship.
On that that, the editors here and Smith seemed to
still be going with the idea of the Chinese language
origin story for the term ketchup. They think it comes
from Kate's yap and it would refer to a savory
fermented sauce here though they say not made out of fish,

(24:47):
but made out of soybeans. Um. So I'm not sure.
There seemed to be these competing theories about whether this
sauce would have been fish based or soybean based, or
maybe both, but there does seem to be general agreement
that this was some kind of ummmy, rich savory kind
of sauce, and fermented soybeans in salt or Brian provide
a fantastic savory flavor in many forms. We've talked about

(25:09):
fish based sauces like garam or whatever, but but soybean
based sauces are amazing. Of course, soy sauce, the ultimate
savory condiment is brewed with soybeans and usually some kind
of roasted grain. But that's not the only one. You've
also got, for example, miso in Japanese cuisine, which is
a seasoning, often in the paste form, that gets made
from fermented soybeans and other varying ingredients like coach. You

(25:32):
know this reminds me. You know, you occasionally see sort
of you know, loose time travel arguments where someone will say, hey,
if you were able to bring back, you know, six
machine guns in a time machine and go back to
the ancient Rome, could you conquer the Roman Empire? I
think of even more interesting question is if you were

(25:52):
to bring back like a single um caddy of spices
and sauces from say, your local Vietnamese restaurants or or
Thai restaurant, could you conquer Yeah, any empire of the
British Empire or certainly the Roman Empire. The Romans were
big foodies. They were all about exploring new flavors. But

(26:14):
if you were to present them with this, uh, would
you have the upper hand at least until you ran
out anyway? Yeah? Maybe instead you should bring like a
soy sauce brewery along with you a few a few recipes,
secret recipes in code. Yeah, So Smith writes anyway that
the British colonists and traders would have come into contact

(26:35):
with sauces of these kinds, either maybe while in China
or as we were saying earlier, maybe more likely somewhere
in Indonesia, and then they tried to duplicate the flavor
once they came back home, but without access to the
crucial ingredient, at least in one branch of this theory
of soybeans. Yeah, I love the idea that they've they've
brought their this this precious sauce back with them and

(26:59):
they've used did opt, They've you know, they've they've they've
they've beat on the butt of the bottle that they've
they've they've they've used their knife to get as much
out as possible. They they've added hot water and shaking
it up and then poured the remnants onto their food.
But now they are out and they must try somehow
to create it again with the limited resources that they have.

(27:19):
So it's like people doing the copycat recipes the same way. Today,
you'll find somebody with a blog who's like, here's my uh,
here's my chick fil a chicken sandwich recipe. You know,
they make it home instead of going there. That's what
they would do with this sauce. And another one of
the reasons I was thinking about this origin in Southeast
Asian and Indonesia is you mentioned earlier that not Geo

(27:42):
article by Jessmine Wiggins that it cites as an example
of an early ketchup recipe in English, a recipe published
by an author named Richard Bradley in seventeen thirty two
for something called ketchup in Paste, which said that the
sauce came from quote bin cooling in the East Indies.
And I think this must be referring to an area

(28:03):
of the of British bin cooling, which is spelled differently
than it is here in this citation, but it would
have been pronounced the same, I guess. And it's this
coastal region of Sumatra around the area of today's Bengkulu City,
which is of course in the country of Indonesia. But anyway,
wherever this comes from, it's somewhere over there, and the
British bring it back to Britain and they've they've tasted

(28:25):
this awesome savory sauce. It's got this salty mommy punch.
Maybe it's made out of fish, maybe it's made out
of soybeans, maybe both, But they want to eat it
again when they're back home. Like you said, they've emptied
out the bottle. It's all gone. And and you lack
a crucial ingredient. Perhaps maybe you know or you don't
know what the crucial ingredients are, so you just try
to do this copycat. So the British traditions actually have

(28:47):
plenty of alternative ummmy bomb ingredients that they could substitute
to try to recreate this flavor. One, for example, would
be anchovies, another would be oysters, another would be mushroom.
Mushrooms are a great umamy rich savory ingredient. If you
know you want to boost that kind of flavor in something,
tryadding dried mushrooms to it. I've also read that they

(29:09):
tried kidney beans and walnuts, though that's weird. I've never
thought of kidney beans or walnuts as ummmy rich in flavor,
but may mean I don't think of them, right, Yeah,
And so they used all of these ingredients in their
various British ketchups. Wiggins also points out that Jane Austin,
the acclaimed author, is said to have been a big

(29:30):
fan of mushroom ketchup in particular. Uh, but again, most
of these ketchups are thin and dark, so dismiss any
notions of Jane Austin nimbly snacking on French fries and
bright red ketchup right. No, Yeah, probably would have been
something closer to like Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce, or

(29:50):
maybe the English condiment known as brown sauce. You know
about brown sauce, Robbert And now it's like a gravy.
Is that what? Because that's what I'm imagining. It's kind
of like a poutine. Uh, you know, gravy. No, I
mean it's like a type of bottled sauce. I mean, actually,
I think technically within the bounds of what we're talking
about historically today, it sort of is a ketchup. It's
not tomato based. It's English brown sauce. There's this brand,

(30:14):
I think it's called Daddy's Favorite Sauce. It's kind of weirds.
I think there's also HP sauce that might sort of
be a brown sauce. It's sort of a a tart
savory fermented kind of sauce. It's brown in color, it's
got vinegar, it's got spices, um, and people put it on,
you know, breakfast, like on your your full English breakfast

(30:36):
eggs and sausage and bags that I've had it, but
I have seen brown sauce mentioned. So basically I think
brown sauces in line with what would have been considered
ketchup at this time. By the way, it's speaking of
French fries, I do want to point out that while
Jane Austin would not have been having a bright red
tomato ketchup, she could have possibly had for fries because

(31:01):
Thomas Jefferson was serving them at the White House at
roughly the same time. Yeah, or something that was referred
to as potatoes served in the French manner, which some
commentators have taken to be French recon I mean essentially, uh,
you know, there's French fries are a simple concept, um,
and then once you've had them, you will you want
to serve them at the highest levels of government. So

(31:24):
I would love to see a restaurant titled Jane Austin's
House of Traditional English ketchups and potatoes served in the
French manner. Why does something sound kind of sinister about
that potatoes served in the French manner? Yeah, it sounds
you know, potentially um infectious or taboo. You know. So
I hear you like potatoes, but do you like potatoes

(31:46):
in the French manner? Done? Okay, Well we're still so
here We've got various things that are referred to as
ketchups in British cuisine, derived probably from original savory sauces
in Asian cuisine, made out of all kinds of differ
and stuff mushrooms, oysters and chovies, walnuts, beans, and so
how do we get from that to the the ketchup

(32:08):
that we were talking about at the beginning of the
episode as being considered synonymous with American food, you know,
American fast food especially. Well, so British colonists brought their
interpretations of ketchup with them to America, where the recipe experiments,
of course, continued over the years. It didn't just stop
evolving there in Smith notes that beans and apples were
tried out as major ingredients of ketchup um. And of

(32:31):
course we got to get to the tomato somehow. And
here the line of connection is getting a lot clearer
because the tomato is a new world very originally cultivated
by the native peoples of Central and South America, and
the tomato is also like anchovies, like mushrooms, like the
fermented soybeans, rich in savory umami flavors. So already we

(32:52):
can see ketchup as a true product of international trade
inspired by Asian culinary traditions interpreted by European ends using
the natural bounty of the America's Yeah, and I think
it's not surprising at all that you start to see
tomatoes showing up as a main ingredient and ketchup recipes
in the United States in the early eighteen hundreds. For example,

(33:14):
an early published recipe for tomato ketchup, maybe the earliest
one was written by the American horticulturists and scientist James Mice,
who was living in Philadelphia in the year eighteen twelve,
and Mice referred to tomatoes in this recipe as love apples,
which is a term from the French the palm de
more apparently the apple of love, which is interesting to

(33:37):
me because it's parallel to the French term for potatoes
palm to tear there or the apples of the earth.
And that makes me wonder are there other French phrases
of the just anything that was previously unfamiliar in the
language is apples of something like well, especially with the tomato,
it makes sense, right, You're suddenly presented with this new food.
What's your frame of reference for something that looks like this?

(33:59):
You might turn to the apple and say, oh, it's this.
It's this strange apple that came from from the New World,
and it's a it's a it has a totally different
flavor profile. Let's start cooking with it. Of course, then again,
I think also in Italian tomatoes pomadoro, and I think
the origin of that is the is golden apple. Yeah,

(34:19):
but I do love that the apple of love when
you have a really good tomato. I believe that title
is appropriate. Oh absolutely, But what what would the French
word for peppers be? Pepper is also a New World
uh crop genus that brought over the capsicum? Would it
be apple? Apples of burning? Anyway? Miss recipe for catchup

(34:39):
involved a tomato pulp, base, and brandy, but did not
include common ingredients you'd find today like vinegar or sugar. Now,
of course, tomatoes naturally have both sweetness and acidity, but
sugar and vinegar I think are used to boost those
natural qualities and also for their preservative powers. And also,
just to be perfectly clear, miss recipe here would not

(35:00):
have been the first tomato based sauce by a long shot.
I mean people were using tomatoes and sauces. It would
just be one of the first known times that tomato
becomes the backbone of a sauce that people are calling ketchup, right,
because I think this is more of a modern thing.
But I've when when you have like alleged pizza sauce,

(35:20):
um an alleged pasta sauce from like a very like
fast food oriented Italian restaurant. I will not name names,
but sometimes they are provided here in the office, and uh,
and I tasted, and I'm like, this is essentially catch up.
This is not pasta sauce, This is not uh, this
is this is nothing like spaghetti sauce. This is essentially

(35:42):
catch up. Nothing says the old Country like noodles boiled
for twenty five minutes and ketchup and lots of cheese.
So at this point the stage is set for for
for what is largely the next phase of food preparation,
and that is industrial food preparation preparation, Yeah, exactly. So
throughout the nineteenth century, industrial food production and packaging increased, uh.

(36:03):
And there were multiple types of ketchup sold throughout the
United States at this point, especially after the Civil War,
And at this point tomato ketchup was still only one
of these major varieties of ketchup. But by the end
of the nineteenth century, I think at this point the
conquest of tomato ketchup was complete. So it sort of
happened over the course of the eighteen hundreds. Uh, the

(36:25):
conquest was complete in a couple of ways, both in
terms of becoming the primary variety of ketchup found on
tables and kitchens was now tomato ketchup, but also in
surpassing other condiments and sauces in popularity in general. And
Smith notes that in eighteen s an article in the
New York Tribune called tomato ketchup America's national condiment and

(36:46):
referred to the fact that it was found quote on
every table in the land. So it sounds like by
the turn of the twentieth century, tomato ketchup had reached
a level of popularity close to what it enjoys today
in the United States, but how it was used at
the time I think was somewhat different. Smith reports that,
in line with its traditionally uses, up through the turn
of the twentieth century, the main uses for tomato ketchup

(37:10):
included quote as an ingredient for savory pies and sauces,
and to enhance the flavor of meat, poultry, and fish.
So I think it's more the idea that if your
chicken is bland, you boost the flavor with some UMMMI
rich tomato ketchup, Or if your gravy is weak, you
get some ketchup in there and the gravy and it
will sort of boost the flavor a bit. If your

(37:32):
weenies are lacking, you just add ketchup and grape jelly
and cook him up in a crock pot. What are
you talking about, Like, that's like that's cocktail weenies, right
that really yea, like the rape jelly. I didn't know
that that was I believe that's the recipe. I remember
seeing um and sort of being horrified by it. Seems

(37:53):
like you'd want more ingredients in your your your cocktail
weenie sauce. Well, do you know about curry worse this
German food it now, that's it's basically little sausages cut
up in catch up with curry powder. That's basically it.
And this is something you make or something you purchase
in a camp. I think it's like a German kind
of fast food. I don't want slander German cuisine, but well,

(38:15):
I mean, curry has is certainly another one of those flavors,
flavor profiles that has conquered the world becoming of basically curries,
uh have become an essential part of English cuisine. Curries
have become a very popular part of modern Japanese cuisine.
Uh And and curry can be found, you know, throughout

(38:35):
the United States in various cuisines. So you go into
a traditional English chip shop, you'll find it. You know,
you can get the tartar sauce, or you can get
the curry sauce and a lot of them. So basically
what you're getting at though, is that the use of
ketchup at the time was was more as as a
catch all sauce and ingredients sauce, yeah, uh and, so
I think it was later in the twentieth century that

(38:55):
ketch up became most associated with what Smith calls it's
three major host food. Can you guess what these are? Well,
we've already touched on French fries and um, I mean
the other big one that comes to mind is, of
course the fast food hamburger. Of course, there you go,
that makes sense. Of course. The third one is the
hot dog. This is controversial, and on one hand, I

(39:17):
don't want to be that jerk that tells other people
what to eat or how to eat, except right now.
I always get that feeling about this one topic in particular,
which is that if you're gonna eat a hot dog,
a hot dog has a very natural, heavenly soul made,
and that soul made is mustard. Catch up on hot
dogs seems like a strange betrayal to me. Yeah, well

(39:38):
I don't. I don't. I don't have a real firm opinion.
When I have a veggie dog these days, I tend
to have mustard. Yeah, I tend to put sauer Kraud
on it. Souer Krowd's a great choice. And I also
like a little horse radish. That seems stranger, but I'd
be willing to try that. I've gotten to where I
I like horse radish. I'm just about anything like it's
a good uh, it's a good good way to like

(39:58):
spice it up and make sure I get that that
blasting moment like like where I kind of poisoned myself
where I don't know which bite it's going to be,
but I know one of the bites I take of
this veggie dog is going to make me go blind
for a second. Well, I like that. I like the
sound of that. Also, though, have you ever had horse
radish on smoked fish based spreads, like on a like

(40:19):
a smoked trout or or or like a baked salmon
kind of spread. I don't know that I have. I mean,
obviously I've had like the wasabi uh in in sushi,
which you know that that's an example of the horse
radishi type flavor going you know, super well with with
with fish flavors. So I imagine it would be amazing.

(40:39):
It's very good. The local restaurant here in town, the
General Mirror, is kind of like a New York deli
style place. They do like a baked salmon spread with
horse radish on tops. Speaking of putting Sauer Kraut on dogs, though,
I bet other traditions that are similar to Sauer kraut.
I would say kimchi would be amazing on a hot dog. Absolutely, yeah,
kimchi is good on everything. But anyway, I guess one

(41:00):
thing that we should realize from this history is that
if there's one feature we most often think of as
necessary for Ketchup, it probably is that it's a tomato
based sauce. And this is just historically not the case. Uh.
It's tomato based. Ketchup is a particularly popular variety of
ketchup that achieved dominance over time. Now we were already

(41:22):
alluding to them earlier, but when you talk about ketchup,
you've got to talk about one big brand name, right. Uh.
There're originally tons of different producers of Ketchup in general
and tomato Ketchup specifically in the United States and in Britain,
but in the early twentieth century, one company established itself
as sort of the big troll in the arena, you know,

(41:42):
the dominant player in tomato ketchup manufacturing and sales, and
of course that was the Hines Company, Right. Yeah. This
is one of those situations where you might think, oh, well,
we just think of Hines because they're the major company today.
But you know, it's like it's impossible to separate the
history of ketchup from the step from the history of Hines.
Um Historian Gabriella Patrick points out that during the eighteen hundreds,

(42:08):
when Hines, uh, the Hines Company you know, came to life,
ketchup was made out of all the aforementioned ingredients, uh,
you know, from the anchovies to the mushrooms, but also grapes.
That was an additional ingredient they included here. Uh, she
included here, So it's it's you know, also important to
note that up until until Hines, this was not something

(42:30):
you just you know, exclusively boughted a store. Ketch Up
was something that was also just made in the home,
and it you know, and it was no matter what
the ingredients generally more of a watery substance. You know. This,
this idea of like the thick catchup is is largely
a product of of Hines. And and we can largely

(42:50):
look to Hines as the as the originator of this
characteristic and they would go on to make a big
deal about that thickness. I want to talk about that
in a bit. So Hines focused in on on tomato, sauce, sugar, vinegar,
and spices, and then they made it thick. They made
it as thick as you're probably accustomed to, thick in
a way that it wasn't made in the home, and
thick in a way that certainly lends itself to certain usages, Uh,

(43:15):
that you know, you wouldn't be able to get out
of just you know, this watery substance. Yeah, it would
be less appealing probably to say squired on top of
a hot dog, like it's watery. It would just kind
of like soak into the bun maybe, but yeah, or
to or to dip fries in for that matter. Um,
So it's J. Hines Company had existed for decades and

(43:35):
they've been selling tomato ketchup since eighteen seventy three, and
Hines remained the largest producer of ketchup throughout the twentieth century.
It was flanked by competitors like Hunts and del Monte.
One interesting historical intersection I thought is between the Hinz
Company and a book that I was talking about in
our summer reading episode of Stuff to Blew your Mind recently, Uh,

(43:57):
and that that concerns the push for pure food and
drug laws in the United States by the chemist Harvey
Washington Wiley and others. Uh So, in nineteen o six,
when the U. S. Congress passed the Pure Food and
Drug Act, a lot of industrial food producers would have
been using preservatives like formaldehyde and borax and stuff, stuff
that the Wiley was very against. And one major beneficiary

(44:20):
of this act apparently was hind Since I was reading
a New York Times article that mentions that they had
a method to sterilize and bottle ketchup at scale without
the use of toxic preservatives, and because they already had
this method at a plant, I believe it was in Pennsylvania,
um that they benefited from the passage of this law.
All Right, on that note, we're going to take a

(44:42):
quick break, and when we come back we will continue
our discussion of what is essentially the modern history of
ketch up. All right, we're back. So we've been talking
about how in a way, tomato ketchup is already something
that has a global culinary history. It came from Asian

(45:04):
cuisine originally, and then was something that British cooks tried
to recreate and then spread to America had tomatoes incorporated.
But today tomato ketchup is not just a regional favorite condiment.
It is a huge global manufacturing success. It spread to
countries all over the world, especially alongside fast food franchises.

(45:25):
And Andrew F. Smith notes that as of Americans purchased
ten billion ounces of Ketchup every year, which works out
to about three full bottles for every person in the country.
That's a lot of Ketchup. That is that that is
that's more than my household be well, that's that's more
than my households, you know, purchase of Ketchup bottles. But

(45:47):
I don't know when you start looking at Ketchup consumed elsewhere,
maybe and maybe it is accurate. I'm not sure. Yeah,
for for the whole world and not just America, sales
top eight hundred and forty million fourteen ounce bottles a year. Uh.
The Hinz company alone claims that they sell six hundred
and fifty million bottles of Ketchup a year. And they
also claim, in addition to that, to sell eleven billion

(46:10):
single serve plastic packets of Ketchup every year. That means
about one point five Ketchup packets per human on Earth. Now,
another fact about Hinz Ketchup specifically, we're all familiar with
the Hinz ketchup bottle, the glass bottle that's on the
table at the restaurant. If you've ever fought the battle
of reology against the slow pouring ketchup stuck up in

(46:31):
a in a glass Hines bottle. Apparently we were alluding
to this earlier. The slow poor of Hinz Ketchup is
something Hinz used to specifically boast about in ads for
their product, resting on the logic that a thick, slow
pouring ketchup was you know, it's higher quality. It means
it's made for more tomatoes. The on interesting. I can

(46:52):
see how that messaging would stick to the you know,
the experience of the thick ketchup. I mean, they've really
got ads about it. I've got a link to one
in here that's an old TV out of there that's
got this like jazz music playing, and they say, like
for the slow poor I don't know if they were like,
were there fast pouring ketchups at the time. That just
didn't make the cut over. I'm guessing like your watery

(47:15):
or ketchups. You know, the more essentially more traditional ketchups
are coming out as a as a water um or
also maybe it's a I wonder if there were cases
where restaurants were cutting their Ketchup with water. Yeah, that
could be true. I wonder if some still do that.
But so there was a claim made directly by the

(47:35):
Hinz company that I found recently that they apparently still
enforced slow poor is one of the quality control metrics
of their Ketchup. Quote, Ketchup exits the iconic glass bottle
at point zero to eight miles per hour. If the
viscosity of the Ketchup is greater than the speed, the
Ketchup is rejected for sale. Uh So this works odd

(47:55):
to about two point four six ft per minute, or
about one point to five centimeter per second. So they
claim they reject a batch if it flows faster than that,
But what if it flows slower? Also at what temperature?
So many reeology questions about Ketchup. Well, I imagine these
are insider details that that the Ketchup testers would be

(48:17):
privy to. Yeah, but here's the thing. What happens And
we've all had this experience or well, I don't know
if everyone does, because now we have so many scot
bottles of Ketchup, but I I feel like a lot
of that that experience where you're trying to get the
ketchup out of the bottle and it won't come out.
What are you supposed to do? Yeah, Hines claims, if
you're trying to get the ketchup out of the glass
bottle and it's stuck, the best method to get it

(48:37):
flowing is to apply a firm tap to the spot
on the neck of the bottle where there's there was
a number fifty seven embossed on the glass. Now, I
was looking at an article here that that also deals
with the the the inside business of ketchup production at
Hines uh npr is all things considered. Ran a great
story just earlier this year titled Meet the Man who

(48:58):
Guards America Mary Ketchup by by Dan Charles. He's like
the night at the end of the Last Crusade. You
know who's their stint is I have waited for you
to come and take the ketchup recipe, but you must
be worthy, yes, And that that individual is uh kraft
Heinz ketchup Master. That's his title, Hector azorn No. And

(49:21):
that's what that's who. The story deals with profiles and
it's a wonderful look at the modern state of Ketchup
in Hinds global approach to catch up. Um so Asoro
points out that their ketchups taste has remained constant. The
Hinds taste has remained constant, but the exact recipe differs
from market to market, and this becomes This became an

(49:42):
issue a few years ago, apparently, as they had to
come up with a recipe to satisfy all of Europe,
despite the fact that Germans prefer a ketchup with more
of a vinegary taste and the British prefer of ketchup
with more of a spicy taste. And while Osorno doesn't
spill any secrets, he points out that the American recipe

(50:03):
had to change at one point in the recent past
to reflect shifts in well, he's not very specific, shifts
in flavor, shifts in ingredients. Yeah, it sounds like there
was a recipe change in order to course correct after
some unintended shift in flavor of the American version over time.
And I wonder what that would be. I mean, if
they weren't changing the ingredients, but the flavor of the

(50:26):
ketchup was changing, I would have to think that would
be due to the changing flavor of the tomatoes that
were going into it, because you wouldn't expect like the
vinegar or the sugar or anything to be changing flavor. Yeah,
and tomato crops are certainly susceptible to a number of factors,
and ultimately their flavor is is subject to these factors
and then includes emerging diseases, nitrogen rates, and of course climate.

(50:48):
And then you have post harvest decisions as well regarding
storage and transport that could contentially factor into it. I mean,
it's it's easy to think about the simplicity of ketchup,
but it's certainly when you're talking about a massive of
company creating Ketchup for the world, that is a complex
operation with a lot of moving parts. And and so

(51:09):
it's no surprise that Hines really impacted American commercial agriculture
and food processing in general. Uh, there's a there's an
article on smithsonian dot com from by Amy Bentley titled
how Ketchup revolutionized how food has grown, processed and regulated.
And I want to read a quick quote from it.
Quote innovations and tomato breeding and mechanical harvester technologies, driven

(51:33):
in part by demand for the condiment, helped define modern
industrial agriculture in the nineteen sixties. You see, Davis scientists
developed a mechanical tomato harvester. Around the same time, plant
geneticists perfected a tomato with a thick skin and a
round shape that could withstand machine harvesting and truck transport.
This new tomato was arguably short on taste, but the

(51:56):
perfect storm of breeding and harvesting technology from which it
in merged allowed for a steady supply of tomatoes that
kept bottlers and canners and business. Nearly all of the
tomatoes produced for sauces and ketchup are products of this moment,
as are many other fruits and vegetables produced in the US.
So think about that. The invention of Hinds tomato ketchup

(52:18):
by food scientists lead to essentially the reinvention of the
tomato itself. Yeah, and you see this come through. I mean,
have you ever wondered why if you get a tomato
with the grocery store, it tastes nothing like a really
amazing heirloom tomato grown in a garden or by you know,
by a small farmer or something like. The garden tomato

(52:40):
has so much more flavor. It's it's unbelievable the difference.
And I think a lot of that has to do
with facts about what kinds of you know, what is
selected for when you're creating a grocery store tomato, which
is probably similar to an industrial tomato, it's tomatoes that
have to be able to survive of the harvesting and

(53:01):
transport process and then be appealing in whatever form they're
they're sold. And so for example, like tomatoes you buy
the grocery store are probably a big thing that's being
selected for in the breeding process. Is just them not
getting crushed in being harvested in shipped to the store. Yeah,
So if you have given up on tomatoes, you think

(53:21):
you don't like tomatoes, and you're basing that mostly on
grocery store tomatoes, then you really should try, you know,
you have the opportunity to, you know, try an heirloom tomato,
try a farmer's market tomato and uh and and see
if that doesn't give you something a little different. I
will say, also a very good compromise if you you know,

(53:42):
a lot of people don't have they can't make it
out to the farmer's market, or it's not the right
time of year or whatever. If you're looking for a compromise,
try cherry tomatoes, little grape tomatoes. I think those tend
to be the best variety of tomato that you can
get at a large scale grocery store. So, speaking of
grocery stores today, hind Cells about sevent of America's catch
Up And yes, the product is largely a monolith. But

(54:06):
but they and other ketchup makers have shaken things up.
They've experimented with new concepts, and a big part of
this is that the very international world that catch Up
emerged from has kind of come back to challenge it
in some ways. Um, you know, they're you know, and
in some cases that these products are very ketch up
like in their profile. I mean, consider a Blessed Siracha

(54:26):
sauce or Holy uh gochu Jong sauce, the Korean ketchup
like sauce. I love gochu Chong. I love it. Yes,
it's it's it's so good. I've been using it. I
started off, of course, just using it, you know, like
kin a bee been Bob kind of a bull. But
now I keep using it on things that, uh that
are not even necessarily Korean, just because it's just it's

(54:48):
so good and and and it is kind of like
Korean ketchup. In fact, if you do an Amazon search
for quote Korean catch up, you will bring up tons
of goguchan uh and as well as a answered Hinds
at it's a very top you know. Here, here's one
good thing you can make in your home. If you
want something really exciting to dip your tator tots in
or whatever, just make yourself some gochu jong mannaise. Yeah,

(55:12):
mix it up together. And then there are also changes
to what you know and what we want out of
ingredients in our processed foods. So I feel like when
I was a kid, you know, you're pretty much guaranteed
that your your hinds catch up or your any kind
of catchup you would buy off the shelf was probably
gonna have high fruit dose corn sirr up in it.
And uh. You know, the consumer demands have shifted in

(55:33):
many ways away from that. So just a qui quick
glance at high at the Hinds website, you'll see that
they have a number of varieties available. You can get
your no salt added, you no sugar added, you're organic,
you're simply catch up, which is a no GMO ingredients,
no high fruits, corns or version of the product. They
have a honey and reduced sugar sweetened version. They have

(55:54):
an added veggies version that is percent added veggies. They
claim with carrots and butternut squash um, which is in
getting away from the idea of just tomatoes, will be
sneaking some other vegetables in there. And then they also
have hot and spicy jalapeno and siracha tomato Ketchup. Do
they make one out of oysters and walnuts and mushrooms?

(56:16):
Not yet, but who knows, you know, maybe like the
Heinz Britain will be will be the next big brand
and school Ketchup. Yeah. And then of course there are
those Ketchup slices we mentioned earlier. I'm sorry I shouldn't. Hey,
I'm sure they're fine. I would try I have just
had not I've not had the opportunity to try one. Now.
In terms of the future of Ketchup, well, I mean

(56:37):
it's hard to predict everything with Ketchup. I mean, look
at the robot catchup. Let's see cyborg catchip, nano catch failing. Yeah, well,
we've already taken Ketchup as well as mustard in various
other condiments into space, Uh, into you know, lo G environments,
orbital environments and uh. And it really makes sense because

(57:00):
it's takes salt and pepper. For instance, you can have
salt and pepper on your food in space, but it
has to be in the liquid form. You can't have
a you can't have a grind your own pepper and space. Yeah,
it would be it would be a risk to the environment,
you know, to the machinery. You might never have thought
about this as one of the weird things about eating

(57:21):
food in space. But food does not fall in space.
So like, you can't put something on your food by
like just dumping it out on top liquids. You have
to get them to adhere to your food if you
want them to to stick. And therefore a thick catchup
is ideal for a low G or zero G environment.
I mean in a in a sense catchup. Uh was

(57:45):
destined to go into space. It foretold space travel in
summer spects. So it's it's reasonable to assume ketchup will
continue to follow us into space and to other planets
even and to flavor the spice melange. Yeah. However, here
on Earth, Uh, you know, we're dealing with challenges uh
here you know, different challenges, you know, but challenges such

(58:08):
as a changing climate, warming Earth, and so companies like
hinz uh and and and other really any major agricultural
um group or having to turn to sustainability efforts to
deal with it, and then there and then their additional
sustainability efforts that uh that others are urging them to
take on. I was looking at how climate change is
impacting an American icon, hines Ketchup, which was from Harvard

(58:32):
Business Schools HBS Digital Initiative from and basically it discusses
how ketchup depends on tomatoes, and tomatoes are subject to
crop shortages and uh the resulting increased costs as well
as the challenges of decreased water availability. So basically they
point out yet companies like HINS have a number of

(58:54):
sustainable sustainability initiatives already in place, and they could stand
to uh take a few more h in order to
safeguard the world's you know, catch up reserves for a
future that is going to deal with, you know, a
rapidly changing climate. I can imagine global ketchup shortages having
uh profound negative effects. Yeah, now in terms of flavor, though,

(59:18):
I don't know. It's kind of kind we already see, uh,
you know, a diversification of ketchup to a certain extent. Uh.
You know, I mentioned the examples from the Hinds website.
So I don't know, maybe we'll see, Maybe we'll see
you know, more savory catch ups, maybe return of more
vinegar based catchups. Maybe those will become more trendy. Let's

(59:40):
see what's going to be made more abundant climate change,
maybe algae algae based catch up. But also another thing
to keep in mind is if if we're talking about
like changes in you know, the foods that we have
available to ourselves as we're forced to consider, say more
insect based protein sources, like that sounds like a place

(01:00:01):
for ketchup if you ask me. You know, um, well,
in in getting picky kids used to new foods, they
they say ketchup can be helpful. And so maybe if
the adults of America are the picky kids you're trying
to get used to intimate FEGI, uh, ketchup could play
a role there. Yeah, I mean thinking if you're if
you're if I say, in the future, we're gonna have
to eat more bugs. And you think, oh, well, then

(01:00:24):
let me rephrase that. In the future, we'll have to
eat more bugs with ketchup. In the future, there will
be various protein based shapes that you can dip in ketchup. Yeah,
I mean that sounds fine. I mean that's basically what
we have now. Like most this is always my argument
for um, certainly imitation meats, but also for insect based

(01:00:46):
protein uh substances, is that we already have a situation
where the meat has a very ambiguous flavor, if it
even has a flavor at all, and then we're depending
so heavily on the fact that it's fry, on the
fact that it's then dipped and catch up or you know,
some other sauce but probably catch up. Then you know,

(01:01:06):
why why not have a more sustainable substance? At the
heart of that why does the why is the burger?
And then many of these cases need to be made
from a cow, given the environmental costs all of that cow,
when it could be it could be anything, because the burger,
the fast food burger, just really does not depend upon
the flavor of the patty. Say hello to the cricket,

(01:01:28):
big mac. Yeah, and really This gets back to the
the ancient history of the sauce. Thinking of the sauce
not so much as this luxury, as this thing that
makes a nice thing nicer, but perhaps the thing that
can make an unpleasant thing edible, you know, or or
you know, something that is going to add not just
a fun spice, but a necessary spice to life. All right,

(01:01:51):
So there you have it, the invention of catch up. Now, obviously,
we'd love to hear from listeners about this episode because
most of you have probably had ketchup and uh and
and many of you have been exposed to perhaps strange
users of ketchup in your own life, or you've traveled
around and you've got to try. Maybe you have some
experience sampling ketchups in different markets in different countries. I

(01:02:14):
want to hear from the people who have never had ketchup.
I never tried it once, right in. I don't know
if that's possible. I would love to hear from that
human being, um, but I will be surprised when we
actually hear from them. In the meantime, if you want
to check out other episodes of Invention, head on over
to invention pod dot com. And yeah, some of these

(01:02:35):
are food based, but we have most for more technology based. Though,
as we've discussed here, you cannot discuss the history of
food without discussing the history of technology. Food preparation is
a human technology. Food is technology. Is not technology just
because you eat it. Yeah, well, I mean it's the
product of technology at least I don't know. Uh, depends
how you pull apart the terms. But at any rate,

(01:02:57):
we've had a we've had a few food related topics
that we have the pisode on chopsticks, of course, on
pooping automata, yeah, yeah, and I imagine we'll return to
do other food based topics in the future. We did
bread and toast. Bread and toast, yes, another key key
advancement in human culinary technology, and now we have catch
up to put on top of that. Um. But hey,

(01:03:20):
if you want to support this show, the best thing
you can do is make sure you have subscribed, and
wherever you get the show, make sure you have rated
and reviewed it because that helps us out as well.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us to let us know feedback on this episode
or any other to suggest a topic for the future,

(01:03:40):
to let us know that you've never once tried, catchup,
or just to say hello. You can email us at
contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of
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