The chances are that when you think of ketchup it’s a thick tomato sauce – a store-cupboard staple –that goes particularly well with Friday night’s fish and chips or slathered on an American-style hamburger.
As you might suspect, this type of ketchup is a relatively modern invention. Although tomatoes were first domesticated in what is now Mexico and transported to Europe following Spanish colonisation in the 1500s, they took a few hundred years to be fully incorporated into local cuisines. In fact, tomato ketchup wasn’t sold commercially until the mid-19th century, with the famous Heinz brand only launching in Pennsylvania in 1876.
The original ‘ketchup’ actually hails from south-east Asia, where it started life as a salty, fermented, fish sauce. Variously known as ‘catsup’, ‘catchup’ or ‘kitchup’, the name most likely comes from the Chinese word kôe-chiap, which was used to refer to the brine of pickled fish as far back as the sixth century AD. The first English-language recipes date from the 17th century, when British travellers and sailors encountered the sauce in the far east and were inspired to create their own versions back at home.
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