A Possible History ?

 

I guess some people are under the impression that ketchup was originally an American invention, and has always been made out of tomatoes. It's companies like Heinz that have made ketchup fans think tomato tomato tomato!!!

Looking back to the eighteenth century, ketchup started out as a sauce made of anchovies, walnuts, mushrooms and kidney beans. Doesn't sound very tomato like, does it? One popular theory is that the word ketchup is derived from the koechiap or ke-tsiap which is from the Amoy dialect of China. Roughly translated means the brime of pickled fish or shellfish. Around the late seventeenth century the name and samples arrived in England where it appeared in print as catchup and then finally as ketchup. It seems the name has stuck and has been made popular throughout the world! The British took in the idea and were soon using ketchup for pickling anchovies and oysters.

So what about Heinz? Sources claim that Henry J Heinz began making ketchup in 1876. The recipe has remained the same to this day. Heinz was neither the inventor of ketchup nor the first to bottle it commercially. The tomato is a native of the Andes, and early in the 1500's, while living in Mexico a group of Spanish conquistadores discovered it and the tomato followed them back to Europe.

Another source states that ketchup is a term derived from Asian cookery, where it is known to be a sweet sauce made from tomatoes.

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