The lowdown on Ketchup

A photographed moment of the "essence" of ketchup, just in case you missed the blatantly obvious title...

Ketchup, or Catsup, is a condiment made with ripened tomatoes.

That's simple enough, right?
...
not really. this is why i'm spending precious time blogging about a vastly misunderstood condiment instead of studying for my physics midterm. but enough about me, you care about what i have to say about ketchup. right?

Ketchup started out as a general term for sauce typically made of mushrooms or fish brine with herbs and spices. The Malaysians termed it as fish sauce, where elsewhere in eastern asia ketchup was understood to be a tomato sauce. origins of the word are rumored to be chinese in origin, where dialects and pronunciations are very close to ketchup when saying "tomato sauce" in the language.

The term first appeared in western colture in english literature and cookbooks, and the early colonial americans had it as a recipe several cookbooks.

The tomato ketchup as we know it today did not really make an appearance in the western world until America went crazy for tomatoes in the early 19th century, and a traveling salesman named Jonas Yerks popularized ketchup. Somehow.

When the FDA got on the case of ketchup perservation by sodium benzoate and its manufacture in the early 20th century, the Heinz company tinkered and created the sauce as we know it today, a balanced condiment that stimulates all 5 types of taste buds.

Ketchup is a soft solid often used for fries, hamburgers, sandwiches and grilled or fried meat. Ketchup with mayo forms the base of thousand island dressing and fry sauce. Ketchup is also typically used as a base for barbeque sauce, especially in the southern US.

Americans identify with it so much that it has been involved in it's share of controversy in American politics. In 1981 congress tried to issue new standards for school dining programs, attempting to identify Ketchup as a vegetable. Fortunately, that turned out for the best. Remember John Kerry? people made a huge deal about him being tied to heinz ketchup because of his wife, leading some Republicans to create a different brand of ketchup to spite his campaign. Needless to say, that fortunately didn't work out either. (the alternative brand of ketchup , not Kerry's campaign. I'll try and keep political opinion out of it.)

Let's get into the meat of this blog though...

A school of thought maintains that ketchup has a tendency to overwhelm the palate and detract from the overall character of the food you eat, with it's ketchup flavor too overbearing. Not too mention that many food items are well or over-salted and wouldn't require ketchup in that respect. Remember the hot dog people? they belong to this group of people i call the "absolute taste purists" (refer to my post about hot dog etiquitte).

Another school of thought maintains their ideology in one quick statement about ketchup: "put it on if you like it". These people are called "everyone else/the majority of the people in the freakin' midwest".

But yes, just giving you some quick background on ketchup so that you can talk to people about this hot topic that is so darn relevant to your (schmoozing) life. who knows, you might just impress someone with this knowledge. (I mean, when there is nothing else to talk about, of course.)