Selects: How Ketchup Works

Little-known fact: Ketchup, possibly the most all-American of condiments, evolved from fermented fish sauce people in Southeast Asia have been making for more than a thousand years. Learn more in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey, everybody, it's me Josh. And I think that
Will Smith put it best when he said summer, summer, summertime, summertime.
And in that spirit, I've chosen for this week's select
a very summary episode. Indeed, are two thousand eighteen comprehensive
overview of everything to do with Ketchup. I hope you

(00:22):
enjoy it, and I sure hope you enjoy your summer time.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

(00:43):
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer. No, this
is stuff you should know. I hate ketchup? Do you
really really? Do you like tomato sauce like papasta? Sure?
I love it? Do you like tomato soup? D don't

(01:05):
love it? I'll I'll choke it down, though. So I'm
starting to see a spectrum emerge here. Oh yeah, I don't.
I don't go for raw tomato much. Well, I love
cooked pasta sauce. Yeah, but I'm a mayonnaise guy at heart,
So we're talking condiments. You know, one thing about the
the Derrito effect that it kind of ruined me a

(01:27):
little bit on food. Like I'll be like, oh, this
is a good tomato, and then some part of my
brains like, yeah, well it's not in nineteen forties tomato.
You don't know what a good tomato is. What do
you mean, like like a Jersey tomato versus uh, you know,
just some other stupid tomato. No, supposedly, like just the

(01:48):
agricultural production in the US is so homogenized now that
like we've lost all these great heirloom varieties of especially
tomato and the stuff that that most people get that
our tomatoes are just no, they're no good compared to
how they used to be. Oh, you hit up a
farmer's market, sure, but even still grow that junk yourself

(02:09):
right there, you go, or build the time machine, take
the way back machine, and get some tomato. We got
that our disposal. What's your what's your problem? Just cheap?
I don't like to spend it on the gas. Yeah,
well that's funny, Chuck, that you like mayonnaise, Because did
you know did you know before this I should say
that the number one condiment for sales wise in the

(02:31):
United States as mayonnaise. I did not know that. And
when I saw that that surprised me A, and it
surprised me B that it was that much more than Ketchup.
I figured Ketchup would be far and away the winter
because I always feel like the ultimate weirdo for not
liking Ketchup. So what is it about Ketchup? You know,

(02:52):
all like the taste. Okay, that's a pretty good reason
not to like. I'm not wild about vinegar based thing.
Oh yeah, I do like balsamic vinegar, but a lot
of the other vinegars I'm not crazy about. That's one
of the reasons I don't like pickled things, right, But
so vinegar based things, Um, it's really sweet. Um. Then

(03:15):
I don't love sweet condiments. Um. Have you ever had curry? Catchup? No?
I don't. I don't need to catch up? Oh I see. Uh.
And then the when I was a kid, I can't
lie it probably gross me out a little bit because yeah,

(03:37):
that was oh my god, Oh that's disturbing. Um, the
blood thing, you know, I probably thought, you know, it
grossed me out because we would use it as blood
for play acting in things. So yeah, just not into it.
Those are some solid reasons to not like catch Up. Plus,
I don't know if people would probably argue that catchpimanes

(03:58):
are great together. But um, once you're on the mayo train,
to mix up another condiment with it just doesn't make
sense to me. I I don't. I don't discriminate all.
I like most, if not all, condiments. So like, catchup,
mayo and mustard on a burger is good? Do you? Yes?
I can't. It's not like I can't eat it without it,

(04:21):
like I've actually found, Um, I can eat burgers without
catchup now, I'm a grown up, But I do like
a little bit of catchup on there, a little bit
of mustard, and then yes, definitely mayo. Well, Emily loves
catch up so much that she calls French fries a
ketchup delivery system. Yeah, that makes sense, their vehicle for it. Ye.

(04:43):
Tell her to try curry ketchup. It'll knock her socks off.
I totally will. Um. Yeah, but you don't like catch up,
so you wouldn't like this. But if she likes catchup,
even if she doesn't like curry, she may still like
curry catchup, Well, then she's gonna love curry ketchup. So

(05:03):
mayonnaise is the number one condiment in the United States.
It's a big surprise, which must mean catch up is
number two. Yeah, which, by the way, I had mentioned
how much more. I think it was about two billion
dollars to eight hundred thousand, eight hundred million dollars, which
is that's more than double. That kind of surprised me. Yeah,
it is very surprising. What's even more surprising is I

(05:24):
was being facetious because ketchup isn't even the number two
condiments in the United States, is That's right. It's also
had a big surge in the like eighties and nineties.
It's because people like to say salsa catch up is
number three, right, at least it's got mustard beat. For
Pete's sake, What is this the you you know yet

(05:48):
of American households have a bottle of ketchup in there? Well,
it says kitchens, But we'll get to the fridge non
fridge thing later. Sure. So, yes, everybody loves ketchup, especially
in America because it's obviously an American invention. Everybody knows
that John Wayne's grandfather invented ketchup while he was sailing
his Ford truck down the Mississippi River and one day

(06:10):
a magical bottle bug Wiser came and whispered the recipients here,
and they commemorated the event by tuning off fireworks. I
love it, and that's how ketchup was born. Everybody knows
it and fireworks right pretty neat. No, that's not true.
Although I take a little bit of issue with this
because ketchup was first created in Asia, in China, and

(06:33):
about I should say, I saw they think maybe the
Chinese got it from the Vietnamese. Yeah, I saw that too. Um.
But as you will see these recipes that were originally
for preserving fish, it's hey, they didn't have tomatoes at all.
That came in America much later. But it's so not

(06:56):
like ketchup to me, it's you can't even trace it
back and say like, yep, that's ketchup. The point and
even linking these things because you can link them like
it's it. That's the fascinating thing to me about it.
It's like American ketchup. What we think of as ketch
up here in the States, like hind fifty seven stuff, right,
is it's a species that evolved, not hinde fifty seven sauce,

(07:20):
but hinds ketchup. What everybody thinks of his ketchup right.
It's a species that evolved from an ancestor. That that is,
it can directly trace its lineage right back to this
ketchup in in Asia, so much so that the word
ketchup is an anglicization of either a melee word that

(07:40):
was borrowed from the Cantonese or a hokey in South
China Fujian province word. Either way, it was something like
cats you and it meant a fermented fish paste. It's
like when when you go to the store today and
you buy fish sauce. I love it. That's that's that

(08:01):
was that's the progenitor of ketchup. That's where ketchup came from. Yeah,
I mean, I guess that makes sense. It's just to me,
it's changed so much. It's almost like, uh, you should
just draw a line. That's and I guess that line
would be pret tomato and post tomato. I think, yeah,
I think that's pretty fair to say, yeah, pret tomato
and post tomato. You can. You can definitely draw a

(08:22):
line because if you look at Heinz ketchup bottles, it
says clearly tomato ketchup. And there's this really great I
think it was a Fast Code design article by a
guy named John Brownlee who points out, like, why would
they even bother putting tomato on the label. Of course
it's tomato ketchup, you idiot. And the reason is because

(08:43):
that's a throwback to a time when Ketchup didn't have
tomato and it had things like, um, sardines and anchovies. Yeah,
well not sardines by anchovies, so that there were sardines
that there were you name it. And it was probably
in Ketchup at some point, right, so Asia, maybe Southeast Asia,
maybe China. The Brits encountered this on some of their

(09:10):
wild trips abroad. Uh, and as many things brought at home,
said we love this stuff, let's try and replicate it. Uh.
And then in seventeen thirty two was one of the
first published recipes in the UK Ketchup in Paste by
Richard Bradley, Right, yeah, Ricky Bradley, and he did reference

(09:32):
the the East Indies as its origin. Yeah, and then
it was still pre tomato. Sure. Yeah, it was a
very pretty a faithful recreation of the fish sauce that
they found the catsie. Um, I'm pretty sure that's how
you say it. I would be very interested to know
how to pronounce it um correctly, but it was. It
was a faithful recreation of it, which was basically like

(09:56):
preserved fish and a sort of brine with some spices
thrown in, maybe a little mace, some salt, some pepper,
maybe something like lemon peel. And then yeah, if you
like fish sauce, you would love the original Ketchup because
it's basically the same thing. Right, Well, I do like
the sauce, but it's um, you gotta use it liberally
and it's only for certain things. Yeah, yeah, you know

(10:20):
you don't want to just like go throwing fish sauce
on on everything. I don't know, man, if you love
fish sauce, it's it's like it's like Ketchup. People will
put catchup bung just about anything. Well we'll get to that.
So so at first the Brits are like, blind me,
this is really good stuff. Well that's a good accent,
But I I'm not that big on anchovies. What else

(10:43):
can we replace it with? So they started making their
own kind of offshoots of Ketchup where they replace the
anchovies with other stuff. Yeah, I mean mushrooms, walnuts, Uh,
what else elderberry, yeah, oysters. Yeah. And what they were
going for was that ou mommy flavor. They didn't know

(11:03):
it at the time because UMMI wasn't discovered until with
the sixties. I think, Yeah, everybody kind of knew that
it was a thing, but no one had actually like
sussed it out or named it. But that's what they
were going for, was that savory, meaty flavor that you
would get from something like fermented anchovies. And they were
trying to recreate it, and they did. I mean, like

(11:25):
apparently mushroom catchup uh tasted a lot like Worcestershire sauce
um and then uh yeah, walnut catch up. Apparently Jane
Austen was a big fan of that. And if you're
sitting there thinking of putting this on like your hot dog,
hot dogs weren't invented yet. They that's not what people
were using it for. They were using it as like
a base for stews or um like meat pies, things

(11:48):
like that. It was like a sauce. It was a base.
It was something that that you were taking bland food
and making it savory with this bottle of this stuff
that was made from fermented something or other. Well, and
they would base it on They would use it like
we can use barbecue sauce. They would baste it on
things while they're cooking um which I just can't imagine

(12:11):
that like basting tomato based. Well this is before's tomato,
I guess, but this is when it was mushroom based. Yeah,
but you mentioned umami and your buddy Malcolm Gladwell but
an article for The New Yorker and kind of throwing
out the question like why are there so many kinds
of mustard yet to catch up as kind of ketchup,

(12:31):
and his answer was because it satisfies all the fundamental taste,
all five sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. Another answer
is that there actually are a ton of different kinds
of catchup. Well, yeah, I wouldn't any as there are mustards. Uh.
So America is who first because tomatoes are are native

(12:55):
to North America and this is where people first started
using tomatoes the base. Yeah, but Chuck, it took a
really long, circuitous route to get to that point. And
the reason why is in American people were making catchup,
but they were still doing things like using walnuts and
using mushrooms and oysters as the base of it, right,

(13:17):
they still weren't using tomatoes, even the tomatoes were everywhere,
and that was because the Europeans and American colonists or
European colonists considered tomatoes poisonous, so they didn't eat tomatoes.
I think they used them as like ornamental plants or
something like that. Finally some people started to like try
them and tried to convince other people, and then they

(13:40):
went through a little period where they were considered medicine.
And then finally somebody started adding them too to catch up.
And the first tomato catchup recipe appears in an American cookbook,
depending on who you ask, either in eighteen twelve or
eighteen o one. Yeah, the eighteen twelve when uh, well yeah,

(14:00):
that's the one I found was eighteen twelve, but it
still didn't really really take off until post Civil War. Uh.
And this is eighteen seventy one, when a man named
Henry Hines he got together with a doctor. Isn't that right? Yes,
that guy, um Dr Wiley. I can't remember his first name,
but he shows up in our FDA does f does

(14:22):
the FDA protect Americans? Remember that guy who put together
that group of people who would like eat preservatives until
they were poisoned to find out whether something was poisonous
or not. Yes, that was the guy who set up
that squad. Yeah, Dr Harvey Washington Wiley. Yeah, So his
whole deal was for for a while there. Ketchup was

(14:45):
had some really nasty chemicals in it, uh, some of
them had and these were all preservatives. Some of it
was cold tar um that gave it the red color, uh,
and then sodium benzoit benzoit and that helped to retard spoilage.
So it was really nasty stuff and he kind of

(15:05):
first championed um that this stuff is harmful to your health.
So he got together with Henry J. Hines, who was
producing Ketchup in eighteen seventy six, and they were like,
you know what if you use really good because at
the time the ketchup they were making was from like
scraps of tomatoes that were kind of kind of like
junk tomatoes, and they said, you know, if use good

(15:27):
ripe red tomatoes as your base, it has a natural
preservative in it called pecton um, and it really you know,
we got to ramp up the vinegar because that'll help
out with the spoilage and all of a sudden, we
don't need to use chemicals anymore, right, which was a
huge breakthrough. And the reason why there are so many
preservatives in Ketchup was because tomatoes have a pretty short

(15:50):
growing season. It's like mid August to mid October, and
so the only time during the year you could make
fresh ketchup was those two months. You couldn't make a
year's worth of ketchup. Like by this time, people were
buying millions of bottles of Ketchup in America alone a year, right,
so you couldn't make all that in two months, So
you had to preserve the pulp. But they they took

(16:13):
terrible standards and practices to preserving. So when you opened
up that tub of pulp, you know, come July, good
name to make some to make some some new ketchup,
it was totally spoiled, ridden with bacteria. It was very
dangerous stuff to begin with, and that was the basis
that they used to start with. So it was really

(16:35):
bad stuff. And when Hines created this preservative free version
of Ketchup, it was a huge, huge breakthrough. Yeah, and
uh way back in even created that iconic octagonal ketchup
bottle that you can not buying stores anymore as far
as I know, but you can still get in restaurants.

(16:56):
You can take them from restaurants. Just leave an extra
good tip. Right, So let's take a break here and
we'll get back and talk about this foul condiment right
after this. M hm alright, So today, catch up is

(17:31):
basically tomatoes, salt, yeah, vinegar okay, onion powder or some spice,
some kind of sweetener, either a lot of sugar or
a lot of corn syrup or high fruit dost corn syrup. Yeah,
it used. I think high fruit coast corn serves the standard.

(17:52):
And I think it was Hunts that first came out
with a brand that didn't have high fruit toast corn syrup.
And they tower it at all up and down the
avenue and Hines is far and away. Like, since I
don't do catch up, I made the bad mistake of
buying the wrong ketchup one time for Emily, What do
you what kind did you get it? I think it
was Hunts, and you know she was like no, no, no,

(18:15):
no no, It's like, don't bring any Hunts and God
forbid any del Monty ketchup. It's outsold. It's Heinz Heinz
Hines in my house, and uh, it is far and
away the the leader. I think they have what like
sixty or so percent of the market share that's in
the US. They have about of the global market. So

(18:36):
not bad. Hines is synonymous literally with Ketchup around the world.
That's everybody who knows Hines ketchup. Right. We should have
gotten them as a sponsor, Yeah, we should, but then
we wouldn't have been able to do a show about ketchup.
We're given this. We have values, yeah we do, we
really do. Chuck. Congratulations to you on your value and
you as well. So um, catch up is much more

(18:59):
standard ied. Depending on who you ask, it's either incredibly
toxic or actually has some health benefits. Could be both. Right,
there's a I said, I think I already said that.
There was a period where tomatoes were seen as medicine
back in the day. Yeah they had tomato pills. Yeah,

(19:19):
they had tomato pills, and actually they had ketchup pills too.
There was a doctor in Ohio who stole the ideas
of another doctor in Michigan and went to a guy
who was selling patent medicine and said, hey, man, tomatoes
are super healthy, and so by extension, ketchup should be

(19:39):
super healthy. And I believe that they do things like
um treat indigestion by removing bile from the body, some diarrhea,
et ketchup, got jaundice ketchup pills? Right about rhutatism or headaches? Well,
so this is where it starts to get a little wacky. Right.

(20:00):
They started selling Doctor Mills compound extract of tomato, and
they were successful. It's just back in eighteen thirty five,
and they were successful in a bunch of imitators came
on the market, and um, all of a sudden, it
was not so so great any longer. Well no, because
a lot of them didn't even have tomatoes in them.
They were fraudulent ketchup pills, or they were laxatives acting

(20:23):
as laxatives. And so that calls the great tomato pill
market crash of eighteen forty. But today we're much smarter
and rather than catch up pills, we take tomato pills.
Also known as lacapine supplements. Yeah, because lapinas that's the
good stuff that you're looking for that has been shown
to help cancer patients specifically. I think the one that

(20:46):
they've actually proven is prostate cancer. Right, so they haven't
proven it, but that one's shown there's been the most
like positive studies. But even still the jury is still
out on that one. But but yes, prostate cancer is
the one that they they roundly point to and say,
lycopene really helps with this, and at least some studies
have shown that they, like a pine, somehow disrupts communication

(21:10):
between cancer cells and um. It retards the growth of
blood vessels to the cancer cells, so they don't get
they can't grow as well. And apparently the body produces
like a pine naturally, but also readily absorbs and uses
it too. And one of the great sources of lycopene
is tomatoes. Lecopeine gives tomatoes, among other things, that's red color.

(21:34):
But the amazing thing about it is if you eat
a raw tomato right now, you're not going to absorb
as much like a pine as if you ate some
ketchup right now. Yeah it's gotta be cooked. Yeah, it
releases the likecopiner. It makes it more readily available the
human body. We should say, yeah, But they also say,
even if it does help, it's like, you know, a

(21:56):
little catchup on a Hamburger is not nearly enough to
really do you a lot of good. No, it's something
like um uh to two point five milligrams of lycopene
in a table spoonful Ketchup. You say, well, I'll just
eat a bunch of ketchup. The problem is is if
you eat, say like a half a cup about seven
tablespoons of ketchup, but you just have to be a

(22:18):
weirdo anyway to do that, you're getting about three quarters
of your daily sodium intake and four key spoons of
added sugar as well, where you're just better off like
eating some tomato sauce instead. Yeah. But the point is
if lycopene helps humans, which the jury is still out,
but it looks like it's possible, then catch up actually

(22:40):
can help humans by giving a little extra lycopine. Just
put ketch Up in your on your tomato sauce. Yeah,
and all these things can add up over time. Sure,
so Ketchup was was selling well in America post Civil War.
You got the tomato go and now everyone loves it.

(23:02):
But there was a problem early on with Ketchup that
took a long long time to fully solve. Um and
I bet you they're still sort of working on it
is that catch up. Anyone who grew up in the
seventies and eighties and loved ketch up at a diner
would have a hard time getting to catch up out
of that glass bottle. And there were there were all

(23:24):
kinds of tricks. I remember. One of them was that
if you tapped on the fifty seven and the on
the label was that it that it would come out better.
Then you had the jackass who would just smashed the
bottom of it until ketchup would shoot out all across
the table that works but not well, or the more

(23:46):
sheepish person that the diner might stick a butter knife
in there be like die ketchup and coke and coax
it out. And the reason all this is happening is
because ketchup and this isn't a good little dinner party.
Factoid is a non Newtonian fluid. So if you ever
change your oil or or even pour water out of

(24:09):
a cup, you will notice that all pours out at
the same rate. It has a single viscosity. It's a
Newtonian fluid. Newton's like catchup. It can start to come
out very slowly and then all of a sudden it
starts picking up steam and coming out of that bottle,
and that's when you know you're really cooking. Uh. That's

(24:30):
has different external forces acting upon it to either increase
or decrease that viscosity, right, So it has multiple viscosities,
which makes it a non Newtonian fluid, right. And when
you when you put force on its, specifically sheer force,
it changes the viscosity. It actually decreases the viscosity to

(24:54):
catch up, which increases the flow rate, which means it
comes out of the bottle faster. And one of the
ways that you can introduce sheer force s h e.
A r um is to tap on the bottle. That
concussive force looses or changes the viscosity and the ketchup
flows more quickly. So it actually is true to that then, Yeah,

(25:17):
that tapping on the embossed fifty seven, the one that
was like embossed on the bottle, that's that's the perfect
spot to tap because if you hit it with the
heel of your palm onto the rear of the bottle,
if you hit it, if you write, if you do
that lightly, all you're doing is is reducing the viscosity

(25:40):
of the ketchup right in the rear, but the stuff
toward the neck of the bottle that you're trying to
get out, it remains highly viscous. Right. If you tap
towards the neck of the bottle, you're going to reduce
the viscosity of the ketchup that's up there in front,
and it'll start to slide out. If you hit that
thing on the bottom hard enough that you change the
viscosity of all that catch up inside, Yeah, it's gonna

(26:01):
come shooting out and you're gonna look like an idiot.
All your friends are gonna laugh at you, and you'll
die alone, That's right. So they had a problem with this,
and they thought in night, what about ketchup packets. This
kind of solves that problems. You can squeeze it out, uh,
And they said, yeah, that's kind of neat. It might
do well for restaurants, but no one's gonna have a

(26:22):
ziploc bag full of ketchup packets in their fridge unless
you're my mom and they're from like eight different fast
food restaurants. Uh, God bless her, um, so that you
know those are still around. But it finally it took
till three to come up with the plastic squeeze bottle,
which still didn't fully work um because, as this our

(26:44):
own article points out, they made funny farting noises, which
I guess is unseemly at a dinner table. Uh. And
then that what the industry insiders called serum, that thin,
watery kind of grow of stuff that nobody wants on
their their hamburger hot dog ketchup juice. Yeah, towards the

(27:05):
end that serum comes out and nobody wants that. So
those squeeze bottles weren't the ultimate solve. Yeah, it's just
it's basically just separated water separated from the ketchup solids.
And there's their actual academic papers on this conundrum, this
problem with serum separation and ketchup people trying to figure

(27:28):
out how to how to get get around it. They
I think they've hybridized a new kind of tomato that
um allows for less serum separation once processed in to
catch up. Even what, could you just shake it up?
I'm a novice, but yeah, you do. You do shake
it up, and it typically works. But and I think
two thousand two Hinds and Hunts and apparently Hunts was

(27:51):
working on at first, and Hines got wind of it
and started their own project. But almost simultaneously, Hinds and
Hunts released Um, a new type of squeeze bottle that
you could stand upside down. Ketch Up stayed towards the
bottom right, and it was actually designed to catch the

(28:11):
Ketchup juice, the serum and remix it back into the
Ketchup solids as it flowed out. That's right, a a
dude named Paul Brown Um is the hero too many
because he created the silicone valve and it wasn't just
for Ketchup. In fact, I don't even know if it was.
Originally it was for sham it was for shampoos. I

(28:33):
think that he was trying to come up with well
that makes sense, but he's a hero to Ketchup lovers. Yeah,
So these these liquid valves, they had right angle slits
cut into the valve, so when you squeeze a bottle,
it flows out nice and neat, and then they close
back up when you stop squeezing, which seals it back
up inside the bottle. And then it's a revolutionary. It's

(28:53):
a dome that has the slits cut into the side
of it and then around the dome. It's a place
where the serum call X and then as the ketchup
is moving out, it's supposed to mix back in together.
It's so funny how much science has gone into this
right just to get the ketchup right, and it still
isn't perfect. Like you, you, anybody who uses this bottle
knows that you still get ketchup choice when you first
scored it, unless you shake it first. Yeah, and even

(29:17):
then you're still gonna get a little serum. It's just
a fact of life, you know. You just you don't
want to You don't want to do it on a
bad day because that can be the thing that that's
straw that just breaks the camels back, you know where
you just suddenly you're sobbing standing in your kitchen holding
that squeeze bottle of ketchup. See, that's why you go
for mayonnaise, because although it is a non Newtonian fluid, Uh,

(29:39):
there's no mannaise serum. Did you finish your CUPI mayonnaise? Yet?
I did? And I need to go to the little
martin near my house to see if they have more
any any halfway decent Asian market will have it. I'm
sure they do. I mean you can buy uh Macha
powder and eel, so I'm sure they will have cupey mannaise.
All right. So two thousand two is when that new

(30:01):
valve was introduced by Hines and Hunts. Uh. It doesn't
mention poor del Monty. I wouldn't feel too bad for them,
though they're still They're still sell a lot of Ketchup. Yeah,
they're still making that money. You know. I want to know.
I want to hear from people though they are like, no,
I'm a del Monty man. Oh there's somebody somebody out there.
We want to hear from the legit ones, not hipster ones. Yeah. Yeah,

(30:25):
like I like Mallard and del Monty Ketchup and PBR.
I don't um. So two thousand two was when that
was admitted and then i'm sorry, implemented. And then there
was that still final problem apparently with Ketchup, where you
get to the bottom of the bottle of those squeeze
bottles and you can't get it all out, and that

(30:47):
was solved with a little bit of technology courtesy of
M I T called liquid glide. Yeah. I don't know
if they've implemented this yet. It sounds like, um, adding
something that is really unnecessary that could conceivably be toxic.
Oh is it not in there yet? I don't believe so.
From the House Stuff Works article makes it sound like

(31:08):
they've invented it in in and they're planning on it. Got
you haven't put it in yet? Yeah. So the thing
with liquid glide, I looked up what that was all about,
and I think the deal is is it essentially sort
of is a coating on the inside of the bottle
that makes the inside of the bottle pre wet in
a way. Okay, that's slippery. That um that What was

(31:31):
it that Clark Griswold came up with in Christmas vacation?
It was like a silicone that he ended up putting
on the y that's liquid glide. Yeah. Basically I thought
if there was gonna be any vacation reference in this,
it would be real to me to catch up. Betty,
I know what was that one? And that was when
he spooned. Yeah, he spooned the ketchup on the sandwich

(31:53):
and it was kind of this chunky uh and real
to me to catch up and he went nothing but
the best Clark uh. So liquid glide by all accounts,
is they say food safe. Um, but I always wonder
about this stuff, like I don't trust the f D
a sou or I'm not gonna say that I don't.

(32:14):
I don't fully trust the FDA in all cases. So
I just can't imagine that that this that we haven't
been poisoning ourselves all along with food containers. You know,
don't you wonder like if there's going to be that
revelation that like it's a cookbook moment or soil and

(32:35):
green as humans, just that that moment where we come
to realize that this beep whateverything it is, is this
is the thing that's been giving everyone who's ever had
cancer since it's been invented cancer, you know, like this
is the smoking gun. Don't you just think that there's
got to be I assume it's just plastics in general.

(32:57):
I think it's a mix of a lot of things
of modern manufacturing, so and farming and pesticides and I mean,
you name it so depressing. Should we take a break, Yeah,
maybe we can pull this one back from the brink.
All Right, We're gonna get to catch up versus cats up,
which I know everyone wants to know about all right, Chuck,

(33:41):
we shouldn't put it off any longer, all right, hit me.
So ketchup k E T C h U P yep
versus cats up c A T s up weird the
house Stuff Works article I didn't see. I didn't actually look,
but I didn't see this anywhere else. Is that they're
pronounced the same, correct? Have you ever heard that? So

(34:01):
you you've seen people say ketchup and you knew that
in their mind they saw the word cats up, all right.
I did not realize that. I yes, but I always
say ketchup. I say cats up like mockingly, but I
that's how I pronounce it, you know. But apparently the

(34:21):
they're both just bastardizations anglicizations of whatever word ketchup originally
comes from either that Fujian um word or the Malaysian
word for for again that that anchovy fermented paste. And
so I think Hines used ketchup starting pretty early on correct. Yes,

(34:47):
So that's an interesting story, and you just basically told
the whole thing. But yeah, they came Hines. Even though
they're like the global the global leader in in ketchup,
they came to the market pretty late, like thirty years
after Ketchup was sold and mass produced in the US,
Hines came along finally, and they wanted to distinguish themselves

(35:09):
for their competitors, so they used ketchup. But ketchup wasn't
a new word. It was the original word. If you
look back at like some of those eighteenth century recipes,
it's ketchup k E T c h up. And then
apparently sometime in the eighteenth century people started calling it
cats up, and so that was the preferred term spelling.

(35:30):
And then Hines distinguished themselves and brought ketchup spelling. This
the popularized spelling with the K back. Because they got
market share, that became the norm exactly. And then so
it was del Monte who was the big outlier for
years and years and years. Yet when they finally said
all right, no more cats up, ye go home with ketchup, yep,

(35:54):
and they did gave in. What about this other thing
that I know a lot of people have argued over
um for generations, is fridge or no fridge? So, I mean,
it's got a lot of vinegre in it. It's supposedly
as far as Hinz is concerned, they say it's it's
shelf stable, meaning that even after you open it, it's

(36:16):
got enough stuff in it that it's going to stay
fine right outside of the fridge. But they still recommend
keeping it in the fridge. Yeah, they say. This is
a direct quote from Hines. Whoever the the latest Hinds
Air is. I think it's John Kerry. Oh right, wasn't
that wouldn't his wife the Hinds Air? Yeah, Teresa, Teresa Hines? Right.

(36:41):
So John Kerry says because of its natural acidity, it
shall stable. However, it's stability after opening can be affected
by storage conditions, so we recommend, like any process food,
to be refrigerated after opening. So, in other words, if
you live in human Arizona, you might not want to
keep your catchup in and you don't have eric inditioning,
you might not want to keep your catchup on the table,

(37:04):
but you probably could if you really wanted to. But
if you lived in southern California, where the breeze is
always cool and the air is always clean, then yeah,
then you might wanna. You know, you could put it
on your table and you'll probably be fine. Yeah, And again,
it's kind of like a number of different preservatives in it.
It's got vinegar and it has sugar, which is a preservative,

(37:27):
has pecked and naturally found in tomatoes. It's a preservative.
It's probably gonna be fine. But but keep it in
the fridge. I mean, why not. We don't listen to
us unless you have, Like, if you don't have enough
room in your fridge for the bottle of cats up,
then you have too much. Uh, salsa and sarracha, right,
s Racha? Sara racha? You hipster? You ye? Saracha is

(37:51):
really good actually, and in fact that as we'll get
to that, there are sharracha ketchups. They are pretty popular
these days because this are article says millennials like their
spice more than their parents. That's depending on where you
are in the world. Uh, there are all flavors of
ketchups and all ways to use ketchup, depending on where

(38:13):
you are. Yeah, And I just want to say, I
love how that was put. Can't you see a hipster's
parent coming to them and be like, what do you
like more your spice or me, I like my spice
more than my parents. Well, you know that's not what
they meant, right, I know, But let's take a tour
around the world. I know you were leading up to
I just had to double back to that. All right,

(38:34):
let's go to uh, let's go to jolly old England
or maybe then as weight Light even because apparently they
like sweeter ketchup in those two places. Yeah, And in
the Philippines they like sweet catchup, but they like sweet
ketchup that's made from a banana base rather than a
tomato base. But they're not crazy over there, so they

(38:54):
die it red so it looks like tomato ketchup. Yeah,
and we also should say that in England they might
be more apt to reach for the HP sauce before
they catch up though, right, the brown sauce, Yes, they
love that stuff. Yeah, I think that's their number one
condiment over there, HP sauce. What do they just call
it the brown sauce? They call it the brown, the brown,

(39:15):
that's heroin, big brown, No, big brown. Apparently Americans, like
we said, uh, well, we eat a lot of ketchup,
but we're not the leading consumer because the Fins and
the Canadians love the stuff more than we do even, yeah,
which is pretty shameful. America's shameful. Yeah, Mayonnaise and salsa

(39:37):
so um in China, Jamaica, and I believe Thailand they
like to put ketchup on fried chicken. I gotta try
that one. What about pizza, uh, Eastern Eastern Europe apparently,
and Trinidad, India, Japan and Poland. That's how you know

(40:00):
it's good man. That is a diverse collection of countries
that all put ketchup on their pizza. You know what's
funny is my friend Eddie, I can say all of
these foods ranch dressing. Well, yeah, I mean, ranch dressing
should be the number one condiment in the world. Chuck,
hold on, I have to tell you something. You have
to go to Japan one of these days. Right there

(40:23):
are over there they Oh, I thought it was just understood.
You have a standing invitation to come to Japan every
time we got because you are the ambassador. All right,
I've got the sash and everything, but Japan's misspelled. Um
it's a They have pizza over there and rather than
tomato sauce, it's gonna knock your socks off. They use

(40:44):
that Japanese mayo what with corn and sometimes ham pan
chetta or something like that. All right, so you've got
a dough, then you've got a spread of mayonnaise, corn
off the cob huh and ham. Yes, and it is
mind blowingly good. Is there cheese? I don't remember if

(41:08):
there's no. They're not big on They're not big on
cheese or dairy. They don't have that much room for
cows all the all the cows they have are like
Kobe beef cows. I think that's what they kind of
dedicate their cow space too. Could ever tell you my
story of being at the Chinese restaurant when I was
a kid. Uh, there was a guy getting take out

(41:28):
and he went through about uh, probably about five or
six different things, asking if it had cheese on it,
like egg rolls have cheese on it? Uh, moogo guy
pans have cheese on it? And that the sweet Chinese
owner is kind of an older guy kept saying like no, no, no, no.
And at the very after like the fifth thing, the
guys stopped them and said, uh, and his very sweet

(41:52):
Chinese American accent that no Chinese food has cheese on it.
Really was the guy just messing with them or something? No, man,
I think, I don't know. I guess he was just unfamiliar.
I mean this was the nineteen seventies. Oh, so uh
maybe he you know, didn't have experience with Chinese food,
but it's funny as an adult to think about, like

(42:15):
melted on Yeah, that's got white American. Uh so Sweden,
if you go to Sweden, they will actually squeeze catch
up over their pasta. That's like, um, honey boo boo.
Really yeah, they used to put and I never really
watched this show, but I mean I was a conscious

(42:36):
human being back then, so I was aware of this.
But they would they would cook pasta and then put
butter on it and then squeeze catch up on him.
That was like honey boo boo spaghetti. Oh my god,
no comment. We used to be colleagues of honey boo
boos at one point. Did they work for Discovery? Yeah,
they were all on TLC. I have to remember to

(43:00):
put add that back to my resume. Um where where else?
What else we got? What kind of crazy catchups do
we have? Okay? So, um, all right, you ready for
this one? This is I've never heard this before in Canada.
Have you ever had while you wouldn't have, but have
you ever seen ketchup potato chips? Uh? Yes, they're pretty good.

(43:22):
They're better than barbecue chips. If you ask me, hairs
makes a good one, right. Apparently the Canadians do some
wacky thing with it where they take can they take
catchup potato chips and turn it into a catchup cake
of some sort. I've not had this before, but we're
gonna be in Toronto and Vancouver this year, so I
express multiple catchup cakes. Yeah, but not really. You don't

(43:47):
really have to make this catch up I should point
out to since we're talking about that tour that, uh,
Toronto and Vancouver are far and away leading in ticket
sales right now out of the gate, so Canada, like
Ky needs to step it up because Canada's kicking your
butts man. That's the great thing about doing um multinational
tours as you can put one country against the other,

(44:09):
right Yeah, especially as everybody's kind of devolving into nationalism
right now, you can really get it going. Uh. You
know what kind of chips that did have the other
day was the the what do you call it? The
country gravy sausage and country gravy Oh the las Yeah.
I haven't tried those? Are they good? Um? Yeah? I mean,
do you like white gravy sausage? Gravy. Sure it tastes

(44:32):
like that. Really, they nailed it. They nailed it, because
sometimes those things are way off. Well, yeah, they have
a contest, now, don't they. Yeah, yeah they do. I'm
trying to remember some of the other ones because they've
they've had some good ones. But um, oh, chicken and waffles.
Chicken and waffles one was really good. Yeah, it had

(44:52):
like just this hint of maple and but yeah, I
kind of tasted a little fried chicken. Ee. It was
it was good. Crazy, Um, what are the kinds of
crazy catchups do we have? What about catch up ice cream? No?
Thank you? So Baskin Robbins apparently came up with it
and it died in the lab. But apparently it was
based on a Heinz ice cream recipe for Heinz carnival cream.

(45:16):
So that was a thing, which I mean again, I
would try this stuff. Did I ever tell you about
the time you and I went to Plaza Fiesta and
tried tuna gelato and it was like it tasted just
like raw tuna. It was insane. Never heard of it
before and never seen it anywhere else. It was like

(45:36):
this one specific place had it. Man, if you ever
if you ever find yourself in Atlanta, Georgia, was some
time to kill, go to Plaza Fiesta. Try to find
the gelato place and see if they have the tuna gelato.
They have a good uh cowboys store over there too. Yeah,
they have a bunch of them, like good good boots,
hats and shirt belts and checkered shirts and brother, if

(45:57):
you're throwing a kisignea, that's where you Yeah, I'm sure so. Lastly, Chuck,
we have to give a shout out. We would be
really remiss if we didn't mention that one of tomato
is a or catchup is a big ingredient in something
called pruno. Yeah, we talked about prison wine in our

(46:18):
Prisons episode. I did not. I don't think I remembered
that that was. In fact, maybe I didn't know. Did
we say that it was an ingredient. I don't think so.
I didn't notice it until now. But it's like part
of the It's like you use that in sugar packets
to feed the fermentation process in a sock. Right. Uh.

(46:43):
I don't know if you could make an ass like
I think it needs to be a little more air
tight than that. But maybe not, Maybe you could, although
it all just drip out. I'm not sure man man
for the RECP. I came across its like in a
like a big gallon sized zip block bag. But yeah,
after like day two, we were three fermentation. You feed
it with ketchup packets and sugar gross. Yeah, and then

(47:05):
you got some Pruno, which you should never try. You
got anything else? Yeah, we should cover this thing, this
last thing you sent headline Israel ketchup war forces Hines
to relabel sauce as tomato seasoning. So in Israel, the
leading ketchup maker is h O S E M O
S M. And they have a sixty six percent market share.

(47:28):
And uh. In Israel, as in most countries, they have
food standards where you can only call something something if
it has this much of whatever. And apparently Israel's standards
are much higher than the US or Europe's. Yeah, so
you have to have a certain percentage of tomato concentrate
to be labeled tomato ketchup in Israel. And so oh Sim,

(47:49):
even though they have six mark or sixty six percent
market share, went after Hines. They said, hey, we did
a study with an independent lab. It had no skin
in the game. Leading European external laboratory, and they found
out that Hines did not have the required percentage of

(48:10):
tomato concentrate. So they can't even call it ketchup anymore.
And I believe it's being enforced over there. Right. Yeah,
Well this was from two fifteen, and the thing leaves off.
I didn't see any updates, but the article leaves off
that Hines was petitioning with the Health ministry to change
the tomato concentrate requirements down to something like six. Well,

(48:35):
here's the thing is hind said their claims have no substance. Well,
then why are they lobbying to get the percentage lowered? Right?
And I think what happened was Hines was selling the
same ketchup that they sell in Europe and America. And
this is just speculation on my part, but they were
probably selling the same ketchup that they sell elsewhere but

(48:55):
in Israel. But Israel has higher food standards at least
as far as they're cut up goes, and their competitor
nail them on it. That's what I think happened. But yeah,
they can't on the label that they can call it
ketchup in English, but they can't call it ketchup. In
in Hebrew, they can only call it a seasoning malk Oh,

(49:19):
it's pretty funny. It is. It's a funny world. Chuck
it and now Ketchup is done. I guess I didn't
think it would take us in our nine hundreds something
episode to finally get to catch up, but we did well,
and this now freeze up. Now I have permission to
request mayonnaise. Okay, that's a deal, we'll do that, all right.

(49:41):
Maybe we should just have condiment month. Okay, I like
the sound of that. Well. In the meantime, if you
want to learn more about ketchup, you can type that
word in the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
You can also check out that geo's articles on it.
Like I said, fast code is fine, Mental Flaws had
a great one and we got some stuff from our

(50:04):
friends at list Verse who had a pretty interesting compilation
of some cool tomato facts or catch up facts. And
since I said tomato instead of catch up, it's time
for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this wow signal update. Um,
did you get tweets about this? It didn't ignore them

(50:25):
all because I think this is a lie. Oh all right, Well,
so I think it's propaganda. Here we go. Then, Hey, guys,
first one to let you know that I love the show.
I always look forward to new episodes Tuesday Thursday, as
well as the selects on Saturday. I know you would
be interested to find out that I saw a news
article the other day that states that an experiment was
ran earlier this year based on a paper from the

(50:46):
claimed the Wow signal was caused by hydrogen clouds from
comments which transisted, uh transisted, transited that area of this
guy back in nine seven. In January of this year,
those comments transited once again and it was determined they
were indeed the source of the signal. Of course, this

(51:08):
sparked quite a bit of controversy among those hoping that
this was a sign of alien life. But the last
it appears it wasn't. So I can't help but be
a little disappointed. Ever since learning of the wild signal,
I knew it was a long shot. Anyway, keep up
great work. I love to see you in Charleston, South
Carolina someday. I'm sure you'd love that city. And Sean Flanagan,

(51:28):
I do love Charleston. Yeah, Charleston is a top notche town. Yeah,
I don't know if that's has enough people for us
to go. But maybe I don't know. People might come
from around the southeast to that show. Who knows that
hecky went to Birmingham. Let's go to Charleston. Yeah, it's
I mean us playing there is a good enough reason
to get people to go to Charleston. Maybe Bill Murray

(51:51):
would come. Oh yeah, is he still there? I know
his family is. Yeah, he lives there. Okay, I mean
he's I think he's got more than one place, but
I think he Well, it's tell you what, Murray, if
you're listening, we'll list you for our show if you'll come.
He's just crazy enough to show up. Yeah. So that's
from Sean and uh, we had a lot of people
right in about the Wild Signal. So yeah, disappointing that

(52:14):
everybody bought into it, like, oh no, it's not Aliens,
it's this hydrogen cloud. Stupid comments. Well, if you want
to get in touch with us, you can tweet to
us or at s y s K podcast. You can
send us all an email to Stuff Podcast at how
Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at

(52:34):
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