Even mundane things in your kitchen can inspire wonder — or at least be interesting — if you pay attention. If you’ve never wondered about the history of ketchup, or why it’s called ketchup, or what ketchup was like in the olden days, now’s your chance to wonder.
Edit: I made a mistake when I talked about the “mystery” EZ Squirt ketchup. It apparently didn’t have all those colors together. Rather, the mystery was which color you would get. That does make more sense.
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Resources:
11 ketchup facts that go well with everything (Mental Floss)
The fascinating medicinal origins of ketchup (Tasting Table)
A bottle to beckon with (Heinz ad)
Woman is shocked when she compares ingredients in American ketchup vs. Canadian ketchup (Yahoo! Life)
Music: Jens East — Daybreak (ft. Henk) www.soundcloud.com/jenseast
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution V4.0
Transcription (remember, this is a direct transcription of what I said and is not actually how I write!):
Welcome to 9 Minutes of Wonder. I’m Betsy Hedberg. I hope this podcast will help you rekindle your sense of wonder for this awe-inspiring world. If you like what you hear in the next few minutes, please subscribe and share.
Even though I no longer live in the United States, I’m still steeped in its culture, and most of my memories are there because I grew up there and I lived there for most of my life. And few things are more pervasive in America than ketchup. It’s everywhere. I don’t know what percentage of Americans have ketchup in their fridge or in their pantry, but it’s a very high percentage. And ketchup is a part of the memories of people who grew up in that country.
So, for example, one of my earliest memories is my grandmother pouring ketchup out of a bottle onto my hamburger. I must have been three years old. And she was shaking it really hard, you know, to get the ketchup out. And then all of a sudden, a lot of it came out and went all over the hamburger. And she said, “Whoopsie daisy!” And I thought it was so funny! And I just remember this ketchup all over the plate. And, you know, I loved ketchup, so I didn’t really care. It wasn’t a problem. And I probably ate all of it, gross. But I was three.
So I ate a lot of ketchup when I was growing up. And for an American, there’s almost nothing more mundane and everyday than ketchup. On average, each American, everybody in the country eats three bottles of ketchup per year. And of course, that’s on average, so some people eat a lot more than three bottles of ketchup per year.
And although ketchup seems to be getting more popular abroad, it’s not a mundane, everyday, three-bottles-a-year condiment in the rest of the world. I remember being in Scotland when I was 21 years old, and I was on a road trip. Well, I was on a bus, and we stopped and went to McDonald’s. And they sold packs of ketchup at the McDonald’s for 10 pence each. In American McDonald’s, they just give you all this ketchup, and it’s included, it’s free. But at the Scottish McDonald’s, you had to pay for it. And they asked how many ketchups we wanted. I was with my boyfriend, and we both, we said “10 ketchups.” Oh my gosh, they just roared with laughter. “10 ketchups, did you catch that?” And they couldn’t believe it.
Anyway, what is the point of my talking about ketchup on a podcast about wonder and awe? But you see, that’s the point. Because in this podcast, I sometimes like to talk about those things that we completely take for granted, or that we just have around, and they mean kind of nothing to us. But if we really think about it, maybe they do mean something. Or maybe they have a very interesting story. And ketchup actually has some interesting stories behind it that I’m going to share with you today.
So I encourage you not only to think about ketchup, whatever you think about ketchup — and maybe you hate ketchup, and that’s not really the point to love it or hate it here. But the point is to think about things that are around you on a regular basis that you don’t give much thought to, and actually maybe they are interesting. Maybe they even inspire a little bit of wonder.
So let’s talk about ketchup for the next few minutes. First of all, where did it come from? What is it? There are various theories about the origins of ketchup. The word first appeared in English in the late 17th century. There’s a 1690 dictionary of English slang that says,”Ketchup, a high East-India sauce.” And that’s interesting because what does that mean, “East India”?
Well, ketchup most likely came from Asia. Some people think it was from China, and some people think it was from Malaysia. The word appears in China, and it also appears in the Malay language of Indonesia and Malaysia. In this particular area of southern China, it means the brine of pickled fish or shellfish. And in Malaysia, it is a sauce that, you know, it’s similar. So they actually, those two could be the same, but they’re not exactly clear on the origin.
When I lived in the Netherlands, we would order Indonesian food because Indonesia used to be colonized by the Dutch, so there are a lot of Indonesian restaurants in the Netherlands. And a common dish would be with ketjap, K-E-T-J-A-P, that’s the Dutch. But in Malaysian, it would be, or Indonesian, it would be K-E-C-A-P. So that’s my favorite theory, that it came from the Malaysian or Indonesian language and came to Europe by way of the colonial traders.
And ketchup, we think of, of course, as having tomatoes. But in the early days, it didn’t have tomatoes at all. They didn’t even know about tomatoes back then in Asia. And in Europe they knew about tomatoes, but they didn’t trust them. They thought they were poisonous. So instead, early ketchup contained things like fish guts, mushrooms, oysters, mussels, egg whites, grapes, walnuts, and other ingredients.
But tomato ketchup first appeared in the 19th century, and it first contained anchovies, believe it or not. But that didn’t last too long, and they took the anchovies away and just made it with tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, seasonings, and spices, and sometimes other things.
In the 1830s, they started to market ketchup as medicinal. And there was a guy, I didn’t write down his name in my notes here, but he created this thing called “tomato pills,” which was like ketchup in pill form. And he claimed that it would help with digestive problems. But that market collapsed after a bunch of copycats sold fake tomato pills that contained either harmful chemicals, or sometimes they contained only laxatives in the pills that were supposed to be treating diarrhea. So go figure, that did not last as a viable business.
But a few decades later, a company called Heinz got into the ketchup business. And you know where that led, right? Because of course, Heinz is the most popular brand of ketchup in America today and actually around the world.
And Heinz is the company that started to use the word “ketchup.” My other grandmother used to call it “catsup.” Have you heard that before? She’s the only person I’ve ever known who says that. And apparently some people in the American South still say “catsup.”
But anyway, Heinz decided, no, it’s ketchup now with a K. Some of Heinz advertising is, I want to say it’s hilarious. It is hilarious, but it’s also like, yeah, I’m glad as a woman I don’t live back in those days. The one from the late 19th century said “Blessed relief for mother and the other women in the household.” This was a slogan that alluded to the lengthy process required to produce tomato ketchup in the home. So apparently women were trying to make ketchup at home with their own tomatoes, and now they didn’t have to do it anymore thanks to Heinz.
There’s an even better one I found from 1934. And this is a full-page magazine ad. It says “A bottle to beckon with,” and there’s a split screen, if you will. On the left, there’s a woman with a stylish 1930s hairdo, and then on the right is her husband wearing his suit and tie. And she says, “Come on home for supper, darling. Corned beef hash, poached eggs, and a new bottle of Heinz ketchup.” And he says, “Coming soon, you angel. That bright, fresh ketchup flavor has my mouth watering already.” And there’s a lot more, it’s very funny. I’ll post a link to that page.
A couple more little pieces of ketchup trivia that I found and we’ll share with you now.
I don’t remember this, but in October 2000, Heinz introduced ketchup products that had different colors. It was called EZ Squirt, E-Z Squirt. And it included green, purple, blue, and one called mystery, which had pink, orange, and teal colors, I guess, all mixed with the same delightful food coloring in the same bottle of ketchup. These were discontinued by 2006. So I don’t know, kind of gross.
And one of the most appalling pieces of ketchup trivia that I discovered, maybe you know this already, but Heinz ketchup in the United States is different from Heinz ketchup that is sold in other countries, including Canada. So if you drive from Northern New York into Canada for lunch, you’re going to get ketchup that does not contain high-fructose corn syrup or the ever-popular natural flavors that nobody really knows what it is. It just contains tomato paste, sugar, vinegar, salt, and spices. And the one in the United States has tomato concentrate, distilled vinegar, high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, salt, spice, onion powder, and natural flavoring. So they’re different.
So again, I’ve given you some ketchup trivia. You may be totally disgusted, or you may be interested in going to get some large fries and putting ketchup all over them. Either way, it’s fine with me. I don’t care.
But if it’s not ketchup, think of something else that you have in your kitchen right now that is something you take for granted and don’t even consider. I guarantee you it has a story. I guarantee you there are some interesting factoids behind it. But also, maybe this can make you stop and just look around and notice, yeah, the world really is interesting, even if it’s gross, even if you hate ketchup. And all the stories that we take for granted, when I think about things like this, it makes me pause and think even boring things can be interesting.
I’ll leave you with that and talk to you next time.