Ketchup, Catsup, and the Curious Controversies of Condiments
Our second most popular condiment sells 10 billion ounces a year in 97 percent of American households. Just don’t put ketchup on your steak
There are a couple of ways to really start a flame war online.
You can insult the biggest pop star/starlet of the moment and wait for their fans to swarm. You could wade knee-deep into the Dunkin’ v Starbucks v (insert your niche coffee brand here). Politics always causes the blood pressure to rise. Same with debating music, sports, or any of a million other things.
But if you absolutely, positively have to burn down the interwebs in the name of getting yourself trending, gird your social media loins and advocate for ketchup on steak.
Go ahead, we will wait….
Back? Good, put some ice on that, stick your phone on the charger, and let’s get to what just happened to you, aside from human nature.
Personally, if I reach for any bottled sauce to put on my steak it means something went horribly wrong somewhere between mooing and masticating. But if you already have — God forbid and forgive you — a ruined protein, making that homemade, artisanal, organic, locally sourced shoe leather palatable very well may lead you to the second most popular condiment in America. 10 billion ounces a year in 97 percent of American households can’t be wrong, can it?
Oh, boy, can it. Especially if you put it on a high quality piece of meat, in which case there is something really wrong with you. And I like ketchup more than most.
How did it come to this, a humble condiment that can rent and tear at the fabric of society itself, depending on social media applications?
Funny you should ask…
Unpronounceable to Useful Knowledge
As with all food mythology, the truth is…it depends on which version you believe.
When it comes to ketchup, or catsup as it was known before American businessmen discovered branding, came from the Far East. Now while tomato pureed-type foods go back a long, long way in history, what you today squirt on your fries mostly came from sailors and traders bringing back to the west a concoction they found on the far side of the world. The various languages of the Malay Peninsula, China, and the hundreds of islands in the South Pacific sounded to English speaking ears much like we would say “ketchup” phonetically. The problem came when the flavors they were experiencing were not replicable, most likely due to not understanding the complexities and mysteries of ingredients like fish sauce and the habits of fermentation in those cultures.
Nevertheless, they took a swing at it. Just as it’s easier to bring back and replicate the soy sauce found in the far East, in England the “katsup” was considered exotic while the food of the time was anything but. Being English, the sauce quickly became a vehicle for things like mushrooms, nuts, anchovies, and other things. Mushroom ketchup became an big thing in Victorian cooking, and is still a thing to be found in some corners of the United Kingdom. But mushroom ketchup isn’t anything like the famous red bottles of the stuff of same name in America.
That flavor combination — sweetened tomatoes, sour vinegar, and spices — was first found in print as part of the understated “Archives of Useful Knowledge, Vol. 2” written by a scientist and precursor to food bloggers James Meade of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. That was in 1812, an era when the first steps at commercial packaging of food such as tomatoes was so poorly done one French review described the early attempts at commercial ketchup as “filthy, decomposed and putrid” in 1866. The culprit was either no preservatives, causing the food to just rot in the can or jar it was in, or the dumping of enough of the available preservatives of the day such as benzoate of soda to render whatever the original product to be a God-awful mess. (To be fair, benzoate of soda being possibly toxic and harmful is a debate that still rages today.)
The quest for global condiment domination by ketchup had hit a snag, and it would take the full power and authority of the United States Government to finally open the door for a horseradish merchant to go charging through and change the world of sauces forever.
Adulterations, Food and Otherwise
By 1880, Harvey had had enough and wasn’t going to take it anymore.
The Civil War veteran, medical doctor, and Purdue University professor of chemistry and mineralogy decided to wage a new kind of war against an enemy he would dedicate the rest of his life to defeating.
…I began my public career without any idea of being quarrelsome and belligerent. But from my entry into public life I became a belligerent in, I think, the best sense of the term. I fought with all my power for what I considered to be right and opposed with all the power at my disposal what I considered to be wrong. I do not claim that my judgment was unerring, but I am sure that those who have been associated with me will bear witness that on the whole my judgment was fairly correct.
Dr. Harvey W. Wiley was going to war against harmful chemicals in food.
It didn’t take long for him to get some heft behind his crusade. Within a year he was named Indiana’s State Chemist. Within three, and having been passed over for the presidency of Purdue, he opened up a new front in the war on unsafe food from a new stronghold: Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). It was a powerful perch, and Wiley wielded his new authority every chance he got.
It was not all clear sailing, though, and Wiley bumped heads with t he Bull Moose himself from time to time:
The president then said to me, “Doctor Wiley, do you think benzoate of soda is an injurious substance when placed in food?”
“Mr. President,” I said, “I don’t think; I know.”
Then, turning to these protestants and striking the table with his fist a blow such as Dempsey might have given, he said, “You shall not put this substance in foods.” The victory against benzoate of soda, so far as the president of the United States was concerned, was certainly won.
Mr. Sherman then interposed as follows: “Mr. President, benzoate of soda was not the only thing that we were protesting about. Also, you will remember, I mentioned saccharin. Last year,” he continued, “my firm of fruit pickers saved four thousand dollars by using saccharin instead of sugar in sweet corn.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” I interjected, “and everybody who ate that corn thought they were eating sugar, whereas they were eating a substance that was highly injurious to health.”
When I said this, President Roosevelt turned on me, purple with anger, and with clenched fists, hissing through his teeth, said, “You say saccharin is injurious to health? Why, Doctor Rixey gives it to me every day. Anybody who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot.”
Our victory was turned into ignominious defeat. The next day, by order of President Roosevelt, the Remsen Board of consulting scientific experts was appointed, and to them were delegated most of the rights and privileges that the law had given the Bureau of Chemistry. The Pure Food and Drugs Act was virtually repealed by executive edict.
But he persisted and won far more battles than he lost. Working behind the scenes he advocated, agitated, and generally made everyone in government and business so miserable on the whole subject of food adulteration that the public and the press were uniformly on his side. He also worked to organize women’s advocacy groups to organize on behalf of the cause of safe food, and build networks of protesters and lobbyists, and the methods thereof that would be used in many equality fights in the years to come.
His crowning achievement was the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act , passed with President Roosevelt’s support and signed by him into law. The effects of the legislation were widespread and immediate. The United States government was now in the business of making sure food and drugs were “unadulterated” to use Wiley’s favorite term for messing with the foods folks ate, with all it’s enumerated powers to enforce them. It sparked a flurry of change, and a rush to market food now being mass produced with modern methods as not just available or tasty, but being of quality and good for you as well.
But some folks were ahead of the curve on marketing quality, and were poised to ride the wave of change all the way to the top of the food business.
Something Saucy This Way Comes, From Pittsburgh
Even before Dr. Wiley was waging a holy war to purify the foods of America, a young businessman in Pennsylvania was already converted to the idea of quality ingredients and superior methods being good for both food and the business of selling it.
In 1886, Henry traveled from Pittsburgh to London, England, and showed up at the most famous grocery provider in London unannounced to try and sell them on his products. Fortnum & Mason sold to everyone up to and including the Royal Family, so Henry figured it was as good a place to start as any in expanding his business interests overseas.
Fortnum & Mason were so impressed, they bought his entire supply meant for a full sales tour — 5 cases worth — with promises for more when Henry John Heinz returned to Pittsburgh.
The triumph in London was a stunning reversal of fortune. Within 2 years, Henry would take sole ownership of the enterprise and rename it H.J. Heinz, leading it to become one of the most profitable food brands in all the world. Only 11 years before he cold-called in London, Heinz had filed for bankruptcy. His initial company that primarily sold a horseradish condiment of his mother’s recipe along with pickles and vinegar suffered from the economic crisis of 1873. Besides the scare of ’73, a subsequent bad business deal in pre-buying crops destroyed the company’s cash on hand and soured Heinz’s relationship with his business partners, the Noble Brothers. Heinz was forced deep into debt, which he abhorred, and relied on his wife’s auspices to keep going both personally and professionally. He swore two things at that low point: He would never again work with an outside partnership, and he would repay every dime of his debts, which he saw as a moral imperative.
Using the bankruptcy to end his unhappy business partnership, he reformed as “F & J Heinz”, this time working with his brother John and cousin Frederick. While keeping their existing products of sauerkraut, pickles, vinegar, and horseradish, the brothers knew a new flagship product was needed to help the new company succeed.
The elements to their fortunes were already mostly in-house. Their production of vinegar and the sealed glass horseradish bottles were in place for a new method and new recipe to become an iconic food staple. Some 60-odd years after James Mease published that first instruction, the Heinz production facility got to work on a new, shelf-stable version of ketchup.
The trick turned out to be that vinegar. Added to the tomato puree, brown sugar, salt, and spices helped stabilize the pressure-cooked and hermetically sealed Heinz ketchup. The glass bottle showed off the “quality” of what the shopper was buying, while using a strategic flag label at the top to hide any pooling that might not look as pretty. Reminiscent of Teddy’s Oval Office rant, and Dr. Wiley’s efforts, the middle label for years carried the proclamation “Free from Benzoate of Soda”. The projecting of superior ingredients made in a superior way was so important to both the product and the marketing of Heinz it was one of the first companies to offer guided tours of its production facilities.
And that facility was something to behold. A benevolent employer for the times, the heavily female workforce enjoyed such amenities as laundered-at-work uniforms, cafeteria-style eating, washrooms, locker rooms, and even on-premise manicures to ensure clean hands working the cleanest factory the world had ever seen. All that in an era when most workers didn’t have running water in their own homes. It wasn’t just out of his good heart, though; it was also smart business. A vocal and high-profile backer of the Pure Food and Drug Act, Heinz realized that promoting quality had a multi-layered effect of preaching the goodness and superiority of the product from a fresh angle. Heinz made a fortune and built an empire starting with using a glass bottle to “show off” the product as an example of it’s inherent goodness.
Most importantly, he wanted to make sure his product was better, to the point of not even being called the same thing as everyone else’s. So every label of Heinz tomato condiment that went out of the factory proclaimed “ketchup” as opposed to the common spelling of “catsup” in use at the time.
Heinz knew how to brand — like the “57 varieties” which was nothing more than his and his wife’s favorite numbers. Since the plant along the Allegheny River was pumping out over 60 products by the time that motto hit the bottles, it was another example of Heinz’s marketing savvy. Modern food advertising includes quality, healthy, and safe as terms many today take for granted. But for every “house-made artisanal organic ketchup “ there are still bottles of Heinz, not to mention generics of every stripe and sort, nearby for far less.
Of course, if you really want to be “artisanal” you could just make your own ketchup concoction…
Artisanal to Asinine and Everything in Between
After all that detailed history, technical specs to recipes, and journeying from the Malay Peninsula, keeping it simple seems like a good thing to do here.
Want some “fry sauce” to go with whatever you have a mind to dunk in it? Here you go:
Put ketchup in a bowl. Stir in mayo to taste. That’s it. That’s the whole recipe.
Jonesing for some curry ketchup for that meat, on a bun and otherwise? Here you go:
Put ketchup in a bowl. Stir in curry to taste. That’s it. That’s the whole recipe.
Want some thousand island for your salad or reuben sandwich? Here you go:
Put ketchup and mayo in a bowl. Stir in chopped onions, sweet pickle relish, dash of sugar, splash of vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. Let sit in your fridge for at least a few hours. That’s it. That’s the whole recipe.
Mastering that simple step of “ketchup plus something” is the entry-level condiment making step for the at-home cook. Kids at fast food joints, school lunch lines, and kitchen tables have been doing it for time immemorial, so there is no reason you cannot. Once you get it down, which ought to take you all of five minutes, you can start getting creative. Want it hot? Add hot sauce, or spicy seasoning. Want to make it exotic? Stroll through your international section at your market of choice and start playing around with overseas additives. The possibilities are endless.
Which is the point of a condiment in the first place. Folks can get all bent out of shape about it, but the idea is a core principle of enjoying food: a quick way to make it better. But, if the 8 seconds it takes to use your fry to mix the ketchup and mayo together for your fry sauce is just too much effort, or you just have to have your condiment out of a store-bought container on principle, Heinz has you covered for that too, but like everything else in the condiment world, controversy immediately erupted.
In the fall of 2018 the Heinz company introduced “Mayochup” in the United States to much fanfare, a slick marketing campaign, and an immediate backlash from the professional fooderati. Much like the original ketchup, Heinz hadn’t invented anything new; it just mass marketed it better. For that matter, the condiment king had been selling the product in the Middle East for years, labeled as a perfect match of ketchup and mayo. The Washington Post noted the debate that followed:
To which you might say: Isn’t that called Thousand Island dressing? Or, in the parlance of McDonald’s, Special Sauce? Mayochup is a pared-down version of those condiments, which typically also contain pickle relish or onion. Though it’s best on burgers and as a dipping sauce for fries, you could put it on a hot dog, if you’re some kind of anarchist, or on chicken nuggets, if you’re a small child. Mayochup may have originally come from Argentina, where it was called “salsa golf.” Nobel Prize-winning chemist Luis Federico. Leloir is credited with creating salsa golf — partly as a joke among friends, named because his recipe was created at a golf club — in 1925. The sauce is popular throughout Central and South America, where it’s eaten with a number of foods: hearts of palm, seafood, arepas and other dishes.
But Puerto Ricans lay claim to the sauce that is Mayochup — except they call it mayo-ketchup (pronounced MY-oh ketchup) or salsa rosada. They’ve been putting it on tostones, or fried plantains, for ages, and Goya bottles the stuff. When Puerto Ricans caught wind of Heinz’s plans to make Mayochup, they were not pleased: On Twitter, they accused the company of “colonizing” their food culture.
But Utahans also claim to have invented the combination of mayo and ketchup. In that state and in Idaho, they call it “fry sauce,” popularized by local chains such as Arctic Circle, which claims to have invented the sauce, and Hires Big H. Both companies bottle and sell their versions of it. They reacted to Heinz’s news mostly with indignation.
Le Cordon Bleu might not add it to their official saucier repertoire list for aspiring chefs to master, but to common folks ketchup might as well be the sixth mother sauce. Or seventh. Or Eighth. Like many things in food, it depends on which version you are going with.
Food wars are all too common, both online and in the real world. North and South Korea often shoot at each other over blue crab fishing grounds. The US and UK nearly went to war in the Pacific Northwest over a single pig. The Papal States fought so many “Salt Wars” they have to be suffixed with “of” and the year to differentiate between them. Then there’s the Boston Tea Party, rice since forever, the McDonald’s Menu Song and elementary school children in the 1980s and…well, you get the idea.
Even Dr. Wiley wasn’t immune to a food fight, and flame throwing media wars. In 1909 he tried to use the powers of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act to go after Coca-Cola, contending that an insidious ingredient in the fledgling soda maker was so addictive because it contained “dope”. He meant the caffeine, and Coca-Cola finally won in the US Supreme Court, but not before spawning another one of those food myths that persists to this day about the origins of Coke’s popularity.
Maybe when it comes to condiments we can start letting some things go, and just let it be. Understand that we all have differing tastes — both on our plates and on Ed Sheeran’s arm — and some of those tastes are better with ketchup. Perhaps we can call a truce to allow our fellow humans the space and grace to eat what they want with the accouterments they want.
Except of course for those “ketchup on high-quality steak” people. They need professional help.
Bless their hearts.
Originally published at Yonder & Home on May 3, 2020.