Ketchup Spreads Its Tastes

India’s ketchup and sauce market, pegged at Rs. 1,000 crore, is primarily driven by the growing demand for fast food

- Jyotismita Sharma

Think of ketchup and your mouth might already start watering at the thought of the vivid red colour tomato sauce which is at once sweet and savoury and of which the world never seems to have enough of.

Ask for a burger at McDonald’s or at any quick service restaurant, and it is very likely that you will get one or two pouches of ketchup along with it as if it is the most natural thing to have ketchup with a burger. The same goes with pizzas and so many other fast food products. It is even not uncommon to see people doing away with the traditional green and red chutneys and having ketchup while eating samosas or other traditional Indian snacks. The fact of the matter is that ketchup has become an integral part of our snacking habits.

The growth of tomato ketchup market in India is driven by the increasing penetration of global and domestic fast food giants. Though the popularity of this condiment is far greater in western countries than in India, ketchup continues to dominate the country’s table sauce market, followed by Chinese sauce along with its various variants.

But did you know that the origin of ketchup had nothing to do with tomatoes? The word ‘Ketchup’ comes from the Hokkien Chinese word, kê-tsiap, which was the name of a sauce made of fermented fish. It is believed that fish sauces were brought by traders from Vietnam to south-eastern China.

In the late 17th or early 18th century, the British encountered ketchup in its original form in South-east Asia. While trying to replicate the fermented dark sauce with the savoury taste, they started adding ingredients like mushrooms, walnuts and oysters.

According to Jasmine Wiggins of the National Geographic magazine, these early ketchups were mostly thin and dark, and were often added to soups, sauces, meat and fish.