November 3, 2022 • 56 mins
Ketchup is in almost 97% of US homes today -- and, while this statistic may sound surprising, it turns out there's a long story behind this humble condiment. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max trace the origin of ketchup from its ancient predecessors in Southern China and the Mediterranean to the introduction of the tomato all the way to the modern day. Tune in for the first episode in our continuing series on the history of condiments (and tell us which condiments you'd like us to explore next).
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
(00:26):
welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so
much for tuning in. This episode might make you hungry,
It might make you angry. If you hate catch up,
it might indeed make you angry. Shout out to our
super producer, Mr Max Williams. They called me Ben, They
called me Ben, and we've got a No, we've got
(00:49):
what may well be the first episode of a continuing
series here today a saga even perhaps, Uh my question
to you, though, Benn, as well, this episode make me hungry.
It may indeed may indeed. What's the difference between hungry
and hang gry? Noll? I think hungry. It is just
like a cutesie stylized way of texting someone that you're
(01:09):
you're hungry. Ah, yes, plaintively so I imagine. Indeed it's
you know, it's no secret, folks, we love food on
Ridiculous History. Uh, some of some of mine. I think
some of all of our favorite episodes are about weird
food history. And you know, if you think are on
(01:29):
air banter about food is a lot, maybe you should
hear us when the mics aren't rolling. We're just hanging
out getting lunch or something. This is a continuing series
on the history of condiments because uh, honestly, we read
a lot about it, way too much already outside of work.
We couldn't think of a better way to start than
(01:49):
with the at times controversial protagonists of all things American condiments.
Catch Up. Do you have catch up in your house? No? Yeah,
I do. Um. You know, it's actually I like to
put it on hot dogs, which I know Chicago and
UH would frown upon. Um. I like a good mix
(02:11):
of yellow mustard and ketchup on a on a dog.
I like catch up as a dipper for French fries.
I also really like it as a an ingredient for
barbecue sauce. You guys cool. If I tell a catch
up story real quick, please do so. A couple of
years ago, you know, we're all Me and my buddies
(02:32):
were all big Atlanta baseball fans, and we were up
at Wrigley Field in Chicago to see, you know, Atlanta
play the Cubs, and it was really you know, fun,
exciting and stuff. But one day we're at Millennium Park,
you know, downtown Chicago. The Bean. Yeah, yeah, we're at
the Bean and we're walking around and you know, of
course we got some Chicago dogs. And I remember I
(02:52):
was there with my buddy Phil, who hates tomatoes but
for some reason like ketchup, and he's sitting there, not
sitting there, standing there with a vendor argument the vendor
like trying to get catch up. He's like, give me
some goddamn ketchup and the and the vendors like ketchup
is disgusting, whole tomatoes on your hot dog instead. I
just want to point that out because it's kind of
a It's interesting I get catch up more than just tomatoes.
(03:15):
That's stuff today. It's very divisive in Chicago, like their
anti ketchup on hot dogs. As you may well know,
a Chicago dog is mustard is the exclusive condiment in
addition to sports peppers, um a relish of some sort
of very like Neon green relish, a poppy seed bun,
slice of tomato, and a whole pickle, which is the
(03:37):
only part that I can't abide. But other than that,
I love a Chicago dog and I really do think
it's the best of dog. It's gotta be all beef
as well. That's the thing. I'm also interested in the
lamb icelandic hot dogs. Maybe that's an episode for another
day hot Dog. Yeah, I like talking about Iceland. Yeah,
there we go. And the thing, you know, to your point,
max Um, you know what we'll find two is that
(04:01):
the ketchup and tomatoes couldn't be much more extricable. You
know what I mean, Like ketchup is two tomatoes what
grape flavoring is to grape. I really did. You don't
really get much tomato flavor from ketchup at all. It's
just kind of its own thing, and there are a
(04:22):
lot of people who prefer the fresh tomato approach to
catch up, just like there are a lot of people
who hate grape flavored stuff but love actual grapes. I've
got to tell you, doing research for this episode was
awesome because it finally allowed me to corral a bunch
of unrelated, irrelevant facts. Today, ketchup is no fooling and
(04:44):
around a little less than ninety seven percent of homes
throughout the United States as and that number is held
steady for quite a while. It's thrown on everything. A
lot of people don't know this, but secret of Thai
restaurants often is that ketchup is used as an ingredient,
and you might not know it if you haven't seen
(05:06):
how the pad tie gets made. Of course, a lot
of people don't like ketchup associated with pad tie, but
people are sensitive about condiments. Some folks hate ketchup. Some
folks say, you know, ketchup as a child's condiment, right,
because it's so sweet. Some love it, but it is
often the first condiment young kids in the US get
introduced to. And a lot of people, you know, you
(05:27):
think of ketchup, you think, okay, how old can it be?
But today we are going to explore the real story
of ketchup, the real origin story. Modern ketchup wasn't invented
until the early eighteen hundreds, but it starts way, way, way,
way before the world knew about tomatoes. Well, I'm hoping
(05:48):
to that will shed some light on the different spellings
of the condiment catchup stylized as you know, K A
T C H G P I get Maybe I'm getting
that wrong, versus cat soup K C A T S
U P. Yes, yes, okay, all right, yes, you're art
(06:08):
is something here, so okay, if we want to talk
about where ketchup comes from, we gotta just forget tomatoes,
will introduce them in a second. Tomatoes didn't get across
the oceans from South America until the fifteen hundreds or so,
which is why a lot of you know, you so,
a lot of people associated Italian cuisine with tomatoes, right,
(06:29):
but that wasn't a thing in the fourteen hundreds. And
even after Europeans knew about tomatoes, which they sometimes called
love apples, they wouldn't mess with them because they yeah, yeah,
true story. They they thought tomatoes were poisonous. The roots
of ketchup, which have nothing to do with tomatoes, start
all the way back in southern China, far back as
(06:52):
three d b C. In fact, where they were already
experimenting with flavor in some very interesting way is typically
doing ferments. You know, we know, uh, there are certainly
there's certainly a kind of modern hipster sort of scene
for fermented foods, everything from kim she too, pickled vegetables
(07:14):
to whatever it might be. And if you've looked into
the history of fermenting, it really is absolutely ancient. Um So,
there were all of these different fermented pastes that were
being developed, let's just say, back as far as three
B c e using things like awful you know, meat
by products that maybe weren't necessarily tasty on their own.
(07:36):
But surely there's something we can do with these if
we just you know, bury them in the dirt and
leave them for you know, six months, and then see
what happens. There was a lot of sea there's a
lot of see what happens mentality, things like fish in trails,
and of course staple crops like soybeans. Yeah, yeah, this uh,
this stuff is fish sauce. Fish sauce is hugely popular
(07:58):
throughout the Pacific, right And I don't know about you, guys.
I love a good fish sauce as well. I've got
some of my own favorites. But this fish sauce was
called cootsy up or get up, which I know sounds
a little like black lodge backwards speech, but that's spelled
ge dash th h c u p or koe dash
(08:20):
h e u p. And this comes from people who
spoke the Southern Men dialect. They loved this stuff because
you could store it on long ocean voyages. But this
wasn't the only kind of fermented fish stuff. There's a
lot of parallel thinking in the world of food, especially
when people have access to the same ingredients. So other places,
(08:43):
other communities and civilizations that had maritime trade, they also
made fermented fish things, paste and sauces. Garum was a
fish sauce in the ancient Mediterranean. It was like the
fish flavored ketchup of the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks.
But Europeans, the ones who were, you know, making contact
(09:06):
with the Pacific, they didn't really know about this when
they found the Chinese sauce. In fact, Europeans probably after
a while, forgot it was from China at all, because
it went from let's see, you went from southern China
to Indonesia and the Philippines, and that's where British traders
found it in the seventeen hundreds and it had a
(09:27):
nice bite. It lasted again for long arduous sea voyages.
Why why wouldn't you love it? So they took samples
home and they promptly began to tinker with the recipe.
We're getting into touchy subject here and ald because we're
talking about traditional British cuisine, which isn't for everybody. But
(09:49):
I'm just saying I can't blame them for getting excited
about something with you know, a little more flavor to it. Fish. Yeah,
I want to point out really quickly a question that
I had that maybe folks out there might have. Is
garum related to the Malaysian Indonesian you know, Indian word
garam like garam masala, which is a spice blend. Um.
(10:14):
Garam is apparently the word from that part of the
country for salt um. So that spice blend, you know,
is is kind of meant to impart a saltiness to it.
And obviously fish has that as well. But a book
called The Fisheries of the Oriental Region claims that this
is just kind of more of a strange coincidence rather
(10:35):
than an etymological shared root. Nice clearing it up. We're
going to clear up a lot of stuff, you know.
So the British folks loved this because they thought it
was a new interesting thing to add to the flavor
profile of their foods. Still no tomatoes though, because remember
a lot of people thought these were absolutely poisonous. The
(10:56):
seventeen hundreds are a weird golden age for catch up.
They called it spiced sauce and uh. They applied this
fermentation process to every kind of ingredient they could get
their hands on. If you look back at old school cookbooks,
you'll see people were making catch up out oysters, mushrooms, muscles, walnuts,
(11:22):
celery fruits like peach, ketchup, plum and ketchup, which doesn't
seem that weird. I just don't know if it's for
me necessarily, And they would The way they would do
it is they would boil this stuff down until it
was kind of syrupy, and they would put they would
salt it, and they would just leave it alone for
a long period of time and then you got kind
(11:43):
of what you've got what National Geographic describes as a
flavor bomb in a great article by Jasmine Wiggins. Well,
one of the most important qualities of ketchup today is
that it is what is considered shelf stable. So you'll
notice that, like you know, at a lot of restaurants
and diners, the ketchup just sits out on the table
(12:06):
and they'll just refill these bottles and maybe they store
them in in refrigeration overnight. I don't know, but it
can sit out, you know, all day um without worry
about collecting bacteria or whatever. As long as it's air tight.
And that's because of this this process using the salt
essentially as a preservative. And as as we look at
(12:31):
this period of time, fellow ridiculous historians, you might guess
already if you just looked at this stuff in a
little ramikin, it is way different from the Hinds or
Hunts ketchup. You find shelf stable and preserved, like you said,
at grocery stores today. One recipe from seventeen thirty six said,
here's how you make ketchup. Swear to god this is true.
(12:54):
He said, take two quarts of really strong, stale beer,
and how off a pound of anchovies and boil it
and then leave it alone. I don't know if I
want that on a hot dog. I don't know either.
(13:15):
But you know what that does sound a little bit
more like is something akin to like worcestersh sauce, you know,
which you obviously can use in different ways. You can
use as an ingredient, or you can, you know, put
it on fries like malt vinegar for example. Yeah it's great,
but I mean we're getting into this area where there
(13:38):
was a sort of version of this that would have
been more regional, like every kind of you know area,
maybe have their own version of this stuff depending on
the the ingredients that were available to them. Yeah, exactly,
And that's that's what people had to do. Remember, there
weren't really global supply chains for fresh food or ingredients.
The only way you're eating fresh fish is if you
(14:01):
live near a place where you can get fresh fish.
So I have to pause and just ask a question
right now, and just let's go through a name some
of those different catch non tomato ketchup varieties and tell me,
let's tell each other together if you would try them?
All right? Number one lemon catch up? Yes or no?
(14:24):
I feel like it could go with some stuff. I
need more information. I lately have been I lately have
been using a lot of lemon, Like I'll cook rice
and use lemon zests and like squeeze of a lemon
in there. And I really like the brightness that a
lemon can add to a to a recipe. But do
I want a lemon sauce that sounds more like something
(14:45):
you put on a custard or you know, a cake,
rather than something you put with something savory, Because lemon
can be a very strong flavor. So even when I
put it in the rice. A whole giant pot of
rice will maybe only get the zest of half a
lemon and the juice of half a lemon. So you know,
I would assume that that that lemon catch up, by
its very nature of what the condiment kind of is,
(15:08):
would be very concentrated and probably a little much. Yeah,
I would. I would, um, I use limon all the time,
lemons and lines when I'm cooking stuff, just for that
that bright central note. But I also go a little
slow with it. I've done homemade preserved lemons. They've got
a kick as well for lemon catch up. I would
(15:28):
think maybe seafood would go nice with like a seafood dish,
but you probably wanna treat it like concentrated coffee and
somehow dilute it. All right, we'll not catch up? What
do we think? You know? It's interesting this also makes
me think of like different kinds of bidders that you
put in cocktails. So there is like walnut bidders, you know,
(15:48):
and there's like lavender bidders and different ones like that.
And that's also a very strong, concentrated kind of additive
that you'd really just want to put a couple of
drops of in your in your cocktail. I do like
the flavor of walnut, and I like like walnut dressing,
you know, Thanksgiving or things that it adds a real
UMMMI flavor, which leads me to Mushroom ketchup is one
(16:11):
that I would definitely be down. I've had it. It's
pretty good. I had it. I couldn't imagine that it
wouldn't be. Yeah, and then, of course, as any my
collogists can assure you people who study funus, um, it
depends on the type of mushroom, right, Uh, yeah, oyster catchup,
I would try it. I don't know if be a
go to. I've had banana ketchup before. I found it
(16:33):
pretty sweet. But that's what people were doing. They were
making it with whatever they had available and trusted already
as a food source. Here's an oyster catchup recipe that
uh that actually, let's let's give like three historic things.
The oyster ketchup recipe seems like pretty inefficient. Yeah. This
(16:59):
recipe that you're referencing, bend from the seventeen hundreds called
for one hundred oysters say, it seems like overkill. It
seems like you can accomplish it with fewer than a hundred.
But who am I to say, mixed with only three
pints of white wine, lemon peels, um with mace and clothes,
(17:19):
which I'm not crazy about, just in general that this
flavors not my bag. Um, I'm gonna say, how much
are you using this though? I mean a hundred oysters
and you're gonna have this for a while. It's not
like you're gonna be making this like once a week.
So oysters are just such a strong flavor. I just
don't understand why you would need so many. Wow, Okay,
I mean you know that is how you make concentrate.
(17:41):
Usually it's with like a ton of the stuff and
then you're you're boiling it down to its essence, you know,
and making like this literal kind of tincture that that
just within it is contained the power of two hundred oysters. Ah, yes,
that is a superpower of an obscure comic book rope
(18:02):
and Max Williams that's his real dame of your heard
it here first, folks, there was commemorative catchup. The Prince
of Wales ketchup was made from elderberries and anchovies. Jane
Austin was down with ketchup. In addition to writing Pride
and Prejudice, she liked to talk about how cool mushroom
ketchup was. But again, this stuff was more. It was
(18:25):
thinner than the ketchup you c today. It was dark,
and it was often added into like soups and sauces.
So to our point about concentration of flavor, this was
diluted in other things more like a hot sauce. Maybe
you might dash into something, you know, rather than dip
almost yeah, yeah, yeah, And I don't know where it
(18:45):
is in terms of concentration compared to say, sesame oil,
which I think is amazing and I probably used too
much of it, but my girlfriend is disgusted by the
smell of sesame oil. Really, I get it for you guys. Yeah, well,
it is strong and it's it's I wouldn't necessarily use
it as liberally as you might olive oil. You know,
(19:06):
it's more of flavoring than like an oil to cook with. Yeah.
I so maybe I've gone overboard within the past. But
I got a really great, um little kit from Momofuku
that included a little bottle of toasted sesame oil their
restaurant grade. Soy sauce and um a restaurant what they
call restaurant grade rice wine, vinegar, and then a bunch
(19:28):
of their chili crisp condiments that are just fantastic. And
the toasted sesame oil, you know, the bottles are they
have those little little daub little daver kind of thing,
so it really just dispenses in drops rather than like
filling a pan with it to like fry something. That's
the way to do it. To illustrate the picture for
for you guys, I I know I sent you my
(19:48):
uh my survivalist level collection of noodles. I have too much,
but I also have like a little gas can basically
of sesame oil. And it's not the first one I've
gone through. But you can make sess me catchup or
sess me flavored catchup, which I've done and it slaps.
I have no regrets. But now I think it's time
(20:11):
to introduce the star of our show. This guy has
been waiting for the right moment to stroll onto the stage,
and that moment has arrived. Let's hear it for today's protagonist.
You might know it, you might love it, you might
hate it. Ridiculous historians, Today's story the tomato Jersey Tomato
(20:32):
Man and idol Hope Potato on a New York Central train.
They no sooner left the station when they started conversation.
The Jersey tomato and the idle Hope Potato had no
reason to complain. Going west, they got to kiss and
(20:54):
through the fields of golden grain. That Jersey blood and
country smile put stars in those hid who eyes, and
the little coach made every mile seemed like it was paradise.
The wheels were ago, and then the whistle was blown
(21:15):
to the tune of Love's refrain. Tomato married the potato.
They have a tom tato with a little too to trade.
This is yeah, this is where he used to Yeah.
When I was a kid, I used to hate tomatoes
with a passion, and my mom loved them and would
just eat them by the slice, you know, just fresh, yeah,
(21:39):
little salt and pepper maybe, But once presented me with
it at the dinner table with a plate of sliced tomatoes,
wouldn't let me leave until I'd eaten one. And I did,
and then I also proceeded to vomit all over the table.
Oh jeez, you never tried that again. But now I
love them. I still won't really eat them on their own.
I need them to be salted and seasoned and on
a sandwich or you know, stewed or whatever it might be.
(22:01):
But I'm not nearly as averse to them as I
once was. That sense memory can be tough. And also
catch up catchup that was very pepper heavy, was a
common favorite during the Civil War, and even it's catch
up at such a weird history. So the tomato, though,
the tomato is to catch up today, what like it's
(22:23):
what electric guitars are to rock music. You can have
catch up without tomatoes, just like you can have rock
music without electric guitar, obviously, but for a lot of
people these seem like fundamental ingredients to their creation. I
think that's a fair analogy. And we mentioned tomatoes were
considered poisonous by Europeans for a long time. Historians suspect
(22:43):
that may have something to do with the acidity of
a tomato. It was messing with the lead pewter plates,
and so you would you would see, uh, this lead,
of course gives rise to lead poisoning, but you would
see the tomato touching of plates and it might mess
with the appear and so honored people might get sick,
so they avoided it until the first known tomato catchup
(23:09):
recipe appears. It's eighteen twelve. There's a scientist in horticultural listening,
James Mease. He calls tomatoes love avils. Please list don't
touch me tomato, please don't touched the domainto touch me,
y Amy puck potato. Don't goodness sake, don't touch me tomato.
(23:33):
And he put booze in his null that's right. He
puts meato pulp and like a secret spice blend and
a bit of brandy, which imagine would ultimately go on
to be replaced with vinegar, which this recipe did not have,
nor did it have sugar. But he was ahead of
the curve because he first mentioned this idea of way
(23:55):
back in eighteen o four, before he even popularized the recipe. Yeah,
and the brandy part might be a little bit shocking today,
but there was a precedent because people have been you know,
like in those earlier recipes we named pre tomato ketchup,
people were putting white whack plan in there and stuff.
(24:16):
Shout out to Tim and Eric. But I you know,
I imagine there are still simmering this down. Uh, so
the alcohol content would would be cooked out right, It
was more for the flavor and the preservative quality. Great point,
and I like that. You also point out that he
mentions the idea first in eighteen o four. This is
the reason food historians like Andrew F. Smith, who wrote
(24:38):
a book called Pure Ketchup, a History of America's National
Condiment with recipes. This is the reason Smith says Mice
probably saw French creole refugees from the Haitian Revolution making
something like this sauce. He got the idea from somewhere, right,
And if you just based on you know what, what
(24:58):
you had presented as that a original recipe, well, it
seems like this would be something almost closer to a
spicy like a Marian era, a spicy tomato sauce, because
it didn't have that stuff you're mentioning, vinegar. Vinegar is
the next key ingredient. Before vinegar was added in the mix,
it was really difficult to preserve tomato based sauces. They decompose,
(25:23):
they break down too quickly. Even now, if you take
a fresh tomato and you don't do any weird magic
to it, Uh, that tomato is gonna rot pretty soon, right,
I mean you've seen it. Anybody who's bought fresh tomatoes.
You put them somewhere and then you're like the countdown begins. Yeah,
even if it's just like in one little spot, it
(25:43):
starts to get soft, you know, And and the frugal
gourmet is among us. Surely have encountered a tomato that
was just experiencing a little bit of rot and maybe
sliced off that side and use the intact parts. I'm
not ashamed. Yeah, but they are, you know, they're already
kind of saw. Then it's the kind of thing that
when you're in the grocery store, when you squeezing tomatoes,
(26:03):
you want to know that it's not too soft, because
the software is when you get it. I mean, it
is interesting how the when we talk about a fruit
being ripe, that is also a term we used to
describe a corpse that is rotting and beginning to stink.
And the closer you get to peak ripeness is also
the closer you get to the beginning of rottenness. Yes, yes,
(26:27):
well put you can of course preserve tomatoes other ways
people can can tomatoes, but you can also preserve them
by making Ketchup. So until the preservation in the vinegar
really hits. There's a problem with Ketchup. You can't trust
Ketchup for at least a lot of us consumers say
(26:51):
both the pro and the amateur ketchup makers were struggling
to make sure you can stelete the stuff over time.
This meant that they were all kind two sketchy preservatives
that were put into it to make up for the
fact that sometimes they were using not the best tomatoes. Right,
you start with bad ingredients. You can get a bad dish.
(27:12):
Sodium bends away, coal tar, that's I know. Uh, And
so a lot of people were distrustful of this. People
had bought bad ketchup bottles before. So the Hinz company
takes the next step around eighteen seventy six. They are
the ones who make a formula that has tomatoes, brown sugar, salt.
(27:36):
Like we said an earlier example of mixed tape of
various spices and distilled vinegar. No, this is also the
company that introduces glass bottles. What a coup because now
you know, you're like you're at the grocer or whatever
you're buying catchup and you want to go for the
stuff that you can see before you buy it, so
(27:56):
it's no longer caveat and tour. They also call that
cats up. Going to your original question earlier, M, Yeah,
it really does just become kind of a branding play
to a certain degree. And by the way, Hines another example,
UM similar to three M where they're filling a need
(28:17):
for a thing that is now it has it's popular,
or the idea of it is popular, or the need
for it is popular, but no one's cracked the code
on it yet, and then they were essentially first to
market with the most recognizable and successful version of a thing.
And therefore also like Henry Hines, who's the founder of Hines,
great grandfather something like that of of Teresa Hines carry
(28:42):
John Carey's wife, so an absolute legacy, um, you know,
American family, um with massive, massive wealth. Yeah, no kidding, right,
And here's the thing they originally had called this stuff catsup.
Hines had What is the difference between cats up with
(29:03):
a C and catch up with a K. Well, they're
just different terms referring to the same condiment. Everybody, I
think knows that at this point. But it's more complicated
because there have been a lot of names referring to
this stuff over the years. Quick list to see if
any of these give everybody a chuckle uh warning they
(29:24):
get kind of susian. Here there's cat chop corn chop,
get zip cat soup, which sounds gross, catch shoop cot
pock cuts, puck cutch puck, and more. That's just a
list of a few. It's like a Willie Wonka song.
After a certain point, sure is um and again it's
(29:44):
sort of like a word that was already kind of
in the zeitgeist. Then you just kind of have to
create your own style on and the spelling, sort of
like sello tape versus Scotch tape or whatever, you know,
combining allaphane with tape and changing the letter. If you
get to it early enough, you can create a branding
(30:06):
that then becomes the stand in for like every other
version of the thing, exactly exactly, the catch up by
any other name, like a rose by any other name
would still taste is sweet. Hines did not start with
just one recipe. He had several let's call him drawing
board attempts. One of the first recipes had all spice clothes.
(30:29):
I'm with you, guys, I'm not a big clothes fan, Uh, cayenne, pepper, mace,
and cinnamon. But then he did a different approach just
for comparison or contrast, I should say, uh, there's another
recipe that at pepper, ginger, mustard, seeds, celery, salt, horseradish,
and brown sugar. So he was all over the place.
You know, you gotta try a bunch of different things,
(30:51):
just like our pal from the story about Scotch tape.
But there is something always mystified me as a kid,
and I suspect him not alone in this Hines fifty
seven catch up doesn't mean there are fifty seven different
types of ketchup or more. Does it mean it's the
fifty seven product that old Henry J. Hines made. No,
(31:13):
by the time they started putting fifty seven on the bottles,
they already had more than sixty different things that were
making the number fifty seven happens. Because all right, here's
the idea of the story. It's or so right. Before then,
he is riding a train in New York City and
he sees this advertisement for a shoe store that says,
(31:34):
we have twenty wanton styles of shoes, and he thinks, oh,
that's cool. Specificity. So again according to the lore uh,
and you can find this on the Hines website too,
he just sort of picked the numbers five and seven
because they were he and his spouse's favorite numbers. They
(31:56):
like the sound of them. And he said he would
later say, I did this because quote the psychological influence
of that figure and it's enduring significance to people of
all ages. So is he like a numerologist at this point?
I think he was just reading the tea leaves of
of of commerce. Uh. In many ways, he was just
(32:17):
a really smart kind of brander and and uh, you know,
I think having that number it is interesting. It sort
of reminds me of Basket Robbins and their thirty one flavors.
And with that though, it makes a little more sense
because it was a flavor for every day of the month. Yeah. Yeah, no,
that way makes way more sense. That's based on something
other than you know what number. I like five? Oh,
(32:42):
I like the number seven. I think we're done here.
That's kind of what happens. So this is also seven
is a cool looking number, that's is five. Yeah, and
they do style it pretty nicely with the font, Like
the seven is very sharply drawn. You know, it really
does have like a very striking look to it, and
(33:03):
it's it's it's just like a striking thing fifty seven.
It's just it's got it's got power to it. If
you ask me, there's a lot of power and specificity.
That's why I love there's a lot of Asian food.
I love where there are numbers in in the name
of the food. I'm a sucker for that because it
sounds almost more scientific, you know, it sounds established distinguished
(33:27):
as the word I'm looking for, like a Chinese five
spice for example, you know, yeah, or like three cup
chicken another great idea, but that's because you use roughly
a cup of a different three different ingredients. But this
is not Heinz's biggest breakthrough. That it's a marketing breakthrough,
to be sure, But one of his big breakthroughs was
(33:48):
not using crap tomatoes. These are riper tomatoes because they
add more plentiful natural pecton. This helped with the quality
and the preservation. But although it seems obvious now, people
hadn't really thought about it at this time. And then
as a result of this, over the years, catch up
(34:10):
becomes more and more popular throughout the US and Europe.
By h five Highs alone has sold five million bottles
of ketchup, and so many other people get into the mix,
and they're trying to differentiate themselves, which is why you
have all those other silly not quite catch up names
(34:30):
in history in the record. And around this time to
while all this has happening, we see a sea change,
or we see a condiments shift. It becomes easier and
easier to buy ketchup that doesn't seem poisonous or taste terrible,
and so people stopped making it at home. People started saying, hey,
the homemade catchup I make just doesn't doesn't taste right,
(34:54):
it's not as good. So then as a as now, honestly,
people have decided, if you can buy shelf stable ketchup,
why would you go to all the problems of making it.
As a result, US folks purchase about, what is it,
ten billion ounces of ketchup every year. That's about three
bottles per person. Yeah, that's true. It reminds me of
(35:14):
like on Great British Baking Show when they're like, we
want you to make a digestive biscuits and everyone's like,
basically a digestive biscuit is sort of the British equivalent
of like a Graham cracker kind of. But usually the
responses I've never made that before because no one would
ever make that, because it's much cheaper just to buy
(35:35):
the branded ones from the store, and they're better than
the ones I would make, and it's a pain in
the butt. So it really became you know, yeah, if
you give people a choice that's affordable and higher quality
or at least better tasting, because it's not like you
know exactly what's in it, especially when it comes to
that secret packet of herbs and spices, then they're going
(35:55):
to choose that most every time. Yeah, exactly. It goes
into convenient and consistency. And this is why now it's impossible.
It's virtually impossible to imagine catch Up being anything other
than bright red and tomatoy, despite the history we all know.
And I would say, it's almost weird not to see
(36:18):
ketchup in someone's house. And there are some restaurants where
you wouldn't expect to find it, right, but most restaurants
have some version. You know, you might go to a
really really fancy steakhouse that looks down on you for
having ketchup with the steak. People are particular about that well,
like Donald Trump, for example, is infamous for liking his
(36:40):
steaks well done, which is a travesty to any you know,
steak house proprietor you know of note, and also with ketchup,
there's jokes been made in plenty of TV shows and
movies where you got some person, you know, fish out
of water kind of story going to a fancy restaurant
and requesting ketchup to it's the maitre d or waiter
(37:01):
you know, gasps and clutches their pearls exactly exactly, or
very fancy Japanese steakhouses where you can only order you know,
one or two particularly cuts of steak and it is
only served with a dab of mustard. Otherwise you're a philistine.
I think you know, Noel Max, I think it's time
for us to get a little bit into the science.
(37:24):
So we've established that ketchup has these the roots of ketchup,
the predecessor of these ancient origins. In the Netherlands, there's
a sauce called ket yap k e t j a p.
It's an Indonesian soy sauce, but when you pronounce the
name is very similar to catch up. And uh, if
(37:44):
you look at how it's made now, you'll see it
varies per brand and type, but in general they do
some of the same stuff. They wash tomatoes, they ground
them up to a fine consistency, and while they're doing
this they remove some of the water. Water is an
enemy of ketchup, and sadly, like tomato is water. Yeah.
(38:13):
It's so interesting too, because I mean I made the
authentic comment at the top of the show that to me,
ketchup doesn't taste like a tomato at all. It's sort
of like, you know, grape flavoring, not tasting like a grape.
But there are tons of fresh tomatoes in a bottle
of of Hinds tomato ketchup, but it just kind of
(38:33):
becomes its own thing. But to that point, a hundred
and forty eight grams of tomatoes are used to make
just a hundred grams of the products. Yeah, yeah, maybe
that kind of answers our oyster question too. I mean
you yeah, yeah, you might. Uh well, the oyster ratio
was was a bit egregious. Yeah, so not at augh. Okay,
(38:58):
all right, well, old Max Oyster Williams is coming through
uh to maintain quality. We're just gonna We're gonna get
you an oyster subscription for Christmas Man. So you might
think catch up is a good way to use old
or low quality tomatoes, but it looks like that's not
(39:19):
the case here. If you want tomatoes for ketchup, you
want to harvest them in their prime and you want
to get them from harvest to production in a really
short amount of time. So big tomato ketchup brands will
often have contracts with tomato growers and say like, okay,
(39:39):
every season, every tomato season, you give us x amount
of your crop or maybe even all of it. And
farmers will typically say yes to that if they can
get good terms because they guarantee someone will buy the tomatoes.
So if you look at the main two ingredients, we
nailed them we as society. It took a second. But
the other two main ingredients vinegar sugar. You need these
(40:02):
to preserve the catchup. It's not just about the taste.
You're making sure the tomato bit doesn't spoil. And it
gets and will get into the science a little bit
about water activity. So water activity is a thing that
you need to know to understand how food spoils. So
low water activity means it's tougher for micro organisms to
(40:26):
contaminate and consume food. Well, just just think about like
standing water. For example, you know you're gonna get mosquitoes,
it's gonna start to smell if it's just sitting there.
So essentially, you know, water in a sealed environment is
the equivalent of standing water. You know, um, it's it's
(40:48):
obviously sealed, but it is going to make it more
prone to growth of of microorganisms and bacteria and molds
and things like that that are going to you know,
spoil the food. And the lower the water content, the
less likely um it will spoil in that way. So
like a low water activity, something close to zero means
(41:10):
there's not much available water. Higher value closer to one
means there's a lot. So when you're looking at pathogenic
micro organisms, the stuff that makes you feel poorly, stuff
that makes you sick, then we see that those little
buggers need a high water activity. And the water activity
(41:34):
of a fresh tomato is very close to one because
it contains so much water, but catchup has a water
activity closer to point nine three. Thanks to that sugar,
and thanks to that salt, this is still high enough
for a lot of micro organisms to grow. If you
put enough salt and sugar into these things to stop
(41:55):
all the growth, that catch up woulden taste very good.
So they he started like think of it. Think of
these preservatives not as a wall stopping all microorganisms. Think
of them as speed bumps that get higher hurdles that
the microorganism has to cross to grow. The next hurdle
is the pH value. Low pH value. Means of food
(42:18):
is acidic. Tomatoes by themselves acidic. Everybody knows. That's why.
I for're making a tomato sauce and you want to
reduce the acidity, you just pop a carrot in there
while you're cooking it and take the carrot out bai leaf.
Yes way, yes way. Yeah, it's very interesting. So with
that being said, um, why isn't there like an acidic
(42:41):
super vinegary kick when you, you you know, squirt some ketchup
on a fry. You know what? It's because of that sugar,
the oysters and the oysters max and the oysters. The
sweetness of the sugar helps mitigate or hide the acidity
of the vinegar. Nowadays, Honestly, a lot of ketchup manufacturers
(43:02):
will skip part of the process, so they'll have their
tomato harvesters take care of an initial step and they'll
just buy tomato paste or puree and convert that into ketchup.
That makes it easier. They just have to mix their
own ingredients to make the recipe, cook it, cook it down,
and fill it into packaging. But now I think we
need to talk about the color briefly, off Mike. In
(43:26):
times past, I think we've we've talked about that weird
period of time not too long ago here in the
US where different ketchup manufacturers were like, let's make it.
What green purple? Was that one? Yeah, it's bizarre. It
was like I think it was a hyans thing, and
I think you can still get them maybe, but I
(43:47):
just don't think who asked for that. That's sort of
the question there, you know, like who is this for?
I guess kids, But even with kids, the red color
is part of the comfort level, And it's sort of
like if you drink a thing that you think is
to be sprite, but then it turns out to be
soda water, it breaks your brain a little bit. So
the expectation of what the color of ketchup is versus
(44:10):
what the taste is. I think it's part and parcel
of the whole experience. So when you change one of
those elements, it can throw the whole thing off psychologically.
So it doesn't it doesn't surprise any of us. I
think that multicolored ketchups didn't really take off. But as
bright red as ketchup is, you would think that they were,
(44:30):
you know, stack in the deck a little bit. But
in fact, because they are using such fresh tomatoes, limiting
exposure to air which would prevent oxidation and therefore like
browning of the tomatoes, it gets that color pretty honestly, Yeah,
it does. Ketchup doesn't actually need a bunch of additional
colorance to be red. Use bright red tomatoes, you get
(44:53):
a bright red ketchup tomato. Some bullsh to red tomato.
Red tomato, my right, tomato. You can't pike micromato because
(45:21):
of the lycopene that's part of the tomatoes. That's what
makes them red themselves. And actually catch up processors try
not to use iron processing equipment because that can damage
the red color. They also try to prevent a lot
of oxygen exposure, because you know how apples freshly sliced
can turn brown when yeah, yeah, so tomatoes can turn
(45:45):
brown if they're exposed to a lot of oxygen and
you know, as they being cut up. But this Isn't
there a way to prevent apples from turning brown by
like putting a slice of lemon in with them or
something like that, or there's something that you can do
to keep them from turning brown lemon juice. Huh, I'm
looking that up. That's right. I think you're right. Also,
weirdly um avocados, as we know, you know, go from
(46:08):
being delightful and and and bright green to turning brown
very quickly too. But if you keep the pit inside
the half of the avocado you haven't used yet, it
will keep its uh it's color. Yeah. You can also
do that by putting them in a brown paper bag.
Is that weird? Uh? So we're so. I hope uh
(46:29):
someone is listening to this while they're cooking. Don't put
ketchup in your pad tie. Just know that's a trick
people do. We thought what better way to end today's
episode by doing just some tangents, a little bit of trivia.
This is the kind of stuff that we find in
our research that doesn't make it into the narrative but
captivates Noel and Maximize so much we want to tell
(46:51):
you about it. There is a retroactively applied reason for
the Hines fifty seven brand. They made a reason for
exist other than I like numbers. Uh, And it's this
hind spokesman a few years back told today Food the
way to get ketchup out of the bottle efficiently. There's
(47:15):
a sweet spot, you know, the the logo is kind
of on the neck of the bottle. What you have
to do is put a firm tap where the bottle narrows,
pop it on that fifty seven logo, and the catchup
comes out more easily. I had never heard this. Have
you ever heard of this? And not? Well, we're full
(47:35):
and Max is shaking his head. No, guys, we can't.
We can't regret the times we couldn't get to catch
up out. Now we just look forward to the future.
And I tried this over the weekend and it it
does work a little better. Still. Another interesting thing you
may be surprised we haven't mentioned already, is that Hyans
also invented probably no surprise, the catchup packet, the ubiquitous
(47:58):
catchup packet. It makes sense because while you know, certain
types of places that are going for more of an
old timey vibe and they even refill these still use
the glass bottles, like diners and such, if you're working
on a larger scale, it's probably more cost effective and
they'll be less like what's the word breakage? Literally, uh,
(48:20):
if you get shipped just thousands of little individually wrapped
ketchup packets, and Hines figured out how to do that,
creating that foil wrapper back in nineteen um and you know,
you will occasionally see ones of those that have leaked,
but it's much better to have a little bit of
leakage from what is ultimately a tiny amount of the
(48:41):
juice than shards of broken glass and gross sticky ketchup,
you know, all over a shipment because a glass bottle
broke or multiple Also a little more detail in that
statistic we kicked at the beginning, If every household had
a fourteen ounce bodily catch up, the combined weight of
(49:03):
all the catch up in the United States in those
houses would be fifty four thousand tons heavier than the Titanic.
That's a lot of catchup. I still I'm thinking, like
I found different different statistics for how many pounds to
catch up people eat. I don't know if we can
(49:24):
trust it all, so let's skip that part. But we
can say, andy, on a good note, as we love
to do, catch up might just be able to help
you live a little bit longer, because that likecopene, the
stuff that gives it that color, has also been linked
to reducing the risk of cancer, and it has the
potential to turn you into a werewolf. Yes, like like copen,
(49:49):
is that the same route as like canropy? Absolutely? I
do have one parting note for us, and it is,
of course the colored catch chips. I looked them up.
They were the blasting green and funky purple, and I'll
tell you right now, I found a photo of the
funky purple fries and I have to like turn it
(50:12):
off periodically because I don't know if you guys have
seen me over here, but I've been uh feeling so
not feeling so well because it is like the most
disgusting thing I've every What you call it funky? What
implies that it has spoiled? You call it something? What's
the other one? Blasting green they didn't even get Like,
(50:33):
blasting green sounds like a euphemism for throwing up. Yeah,
that that's what I'm That's what I'm about I do
from looking at this funky purple on some fries right here,
funky purple, Yeah, it sounds way more like the street
name didn't even get a literation done. And yet and
not not to ruin catch up for anybody, but it
really does go to show the psychological power of catchup
(50:55):
and then the legacy hold that it has on our
kind of psyche because so many people are like averse
to anything that even resembles blood, and yet they'll fully
go to a baseball game and slather a basket of
fries with what essentially looks like blood. Branding is so important.
(51:16):
That's why, that's why Coca Cola is never going to
change that red color, even though people don't associate red
with satisfying drink unless it's soda. Uh So here we here,
We're gonna call it today in the first part of
our ongoing mission to explore the history of condiments, we
want to hear what you think, folks, What should we
(51:38):
cover next? Actually, we want to hear from you, But
I also particularly want to hear from you know, and
you Matt, should we do the Should we do the
basic thing and go for mustard, like yellow and brown mustard,
or should we should we switch it up and find
a different condiment. I don't know, man, I think, yeah,
hot sauce is great. I do think mustard doesn't need
(51:59):
because it occup pies a similar kind of American you know,
staple condiment realm as as ketchup. But obviously we know that,
you know, there are fancy mustards and and that is
really something that ketchup doesn't have. So while there's the
basic yellow mustard frenches or whatever it might be, there's
(52:19):
also like Dijon mustard and and great poupa, and then
like really fancy mustards you'd get like on a charcouter
board or you know, more bespoke mustards. So I vote
we just follow it right up with mustard. I will counter.
I think, I mean this is from the years of
restaurant management. We gotta go with the godfather of all condiments,
which is the incredibly diverse of Mayo is in so
(52:44):
many things, and people don't want to. But I have
a buddy who, to the state, will not eat mayo
and will just slather honey mustard on everything, and I
don't want to. I feel them many times, like you
know what the primary greunion and of honey mustard is, right,
And then there's also a oli, which is what you
call mayo when you want people to pay more for it.
There's also when you say, I don't want to lose
(53:06):
this nol. Have you heard of most start to It's
not mustard? I just I just it was over pronouncing mostard,
but no, tell me about it's a. It's a It
does have a mustard flavored syrup, but it's an Italian
condiment made with candied fruit and mustard syrup. Most start up.
I know, I know, I know. I'm not sure about
(53:27):
that one. I know I'm on the fence about buying
a bottle. But if we can call it for research purposes,
I think we should get together and try it before
we before we do the next episode. But yeah, awesome,
let's do it. Uh the eyes have it will go
to mustard, then we'll go to mayonnaise. Uh, and you
know we'll have to get hot sauce, which is probably
(53:49):
gonna be a two part or spoiler because we got
we all have feelings about that one. But in the meantime,
thank you so very much to our super producer, Mr
Max Williams. Thank you to Henry J. Hindes. Thank you
Alex Williams who composed our track. Who else, who else?
Who else? Who else? Oh, thanks for talking food with me. No,
(54:10):
it's crazy that, Like sometimes we will just have food
conversations and then later we will go back and think,
should we have recorded that? Should that have been an episode? Hey,
you know there's always time to put that practice into practice,
am I? Right there? We go? Yeah, agreed? Uh, And
(54:33):
speaking of practice, we'll need to have our nemesses Jonathan
Strickland ak the Quister on air soon because he might
be a little rusty. It's been so long and now
we really need to do that. I mean, it's not
like it's it's not like we have pre conversations with
him about when these uh, these drop ins will occur.
It's really up to him. I think the man has
just been busy. Uh. He really is a force of
nature and sort of like a specter might haunt different Actually,
(54:58):
specters usually kind of tend to stick to one location,
so that wasn't a very good example. But it is
actually Halloween today, and I tried. Uh. Point is he'll
come one, He'll come, and we will cower. Yeah, yes
we will. We are not cowards, but we will indeed
cower for power for the quister. Uh. And along the way,
(55:20):
we'll thank Christo Rosciota, Steves, Jeff Cote and thanks to it.
You know what I'll say it. I don't necessarily agree
with the militant stance of the Chicago hot Dog, but
by god, I respect him. You gotta have a code well,
and hey, thanks to our research associate on this episode, you, sir,
(55:41):
Mr ben Volo. This is this is a real romp
and a and a gateway drug of sorts into the
wide world of condiments. Um. I look forward to it.
I want to do one on Relish, to do one
on Cole Slaw, you know. I mean, there's just so
many places we could go with this. We want to
spread them out, obviously over time, but for spread out
the continents, you know, I do, Max, and I'm glad
(56:02):
that you took that opportunity and jumped right on the
in there with it. Um. But we will do just that,
and until then, we'll see you next time, folks for
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
(00:26):
welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so
much for tuning in. This episode might make you hungry,
It might make you angry. If you hate catch up,
it might indeed make you angry. Shout out to our
super producer, Mr Max Williams. They called me Ben, They
called me Ben, and we've got a No, we've got
(00:49):
what may well be the first episode of a continuing
series here today a saga even perhaps, Uh my question
to you, though, Benn, as well, this episode make me hungry.
It may indeed may indeed. What's the difference between hungry
and hang gry? Noll? I think hungry. It is just
like a cutesie stylized way of texting someone that you're
(01:09):
you're hungry. Ah, yes, plaintively so I imagine. Indeed it's
you know, it's no secret, folks, we love food on
Ridiculous History. Uh, some of some of mine. I think
some of all of our favorite episodes are about weird
food history. And you know, if you think are on
(01:29):
air banter about food is a lot, maybe you should
hear us when the mics aren't rolling. We're just hanging
out getting lunch or something. This is a continuing series
on the history of condiments because uh, honestly, we read
a lot about it, way too much already outside of work.
We couldn't think of a better way to start than
(01:49):
with the at times controversial protagonists of all things American condiments.
Catch Up. Do you have catch up in your house? No? Yeah,
I do. Um. You know, it's actually I like to
put it on hot dogs, which I know Chicago and
UH would frown upon. Um. I like a good mix
(02:11):
of yellow mustard and ketchup on a on a dog.
I like catch up as a dipper for French fries.
I also really like it as a an ingredient for
barbecue sauce. You guys cool. If I tell a catch
up story real quick, please do so. A couple of
years ago, you know, we're all Me and my buddies
(02:32):
were all big Atlanta baseball fans, and we were up
at Wrigley Field in Chicago to see, you know, Atlanta
play the Cubs, and it was really you know, fun,
exciting and stuff. But one day we're at Millennium Park,
you know, downtown Chicago. The Bean. Yeah, yeah, we're at
the Bean and we're walking around and you know, of
course we got some Chicago dogs. And I remember I
(02:52):
was there with my buddy Phil, who hates tomatoes but
for some reason like ketchup, and he's sitting there, not
sitting there, standing there with a vendor argument the vendor
like trying to get catch up. He's like, give me
some goddamn ketchup and the and the vendors like ketchup
is disgusting, whole tomatoes on your hot dog instead. I
just want to point that out because it's kind of
a It's interesting I get catch up more than just tomatoes.
(03:15):
That's stuff today. It's very divisive in Chicago, like their
anti ketchup on hot dogs. As you may well know,
a Chicago dog is mustard is the exclusive condiment in
addition to sports peppers, um a relish of some sort
of very like Neon green relish, a poppy seed bun,
slice of tomato, and a whole pickle, which is the
(03:37):
only part that I can't abide. But other than that,
I love a Chicago dog and I really do think
it's the best of dog. It's gotta be all beef
as well. That's the thing. I'm also interested in the
lamb icelandic hot dogs. Maybe that's an episode for another
day hot Dog. Yeah, I like talking about Iceland. Yeah,
there we go. And the thing, you know, to your point,
max Um, you know what we'll find two is that
(04:01):
the ketchup and tomatoes couldn't be much more extricable. You
know what I mean, Like ketchup is two tomatoes what
grape flavoring is to grape. I really did. You don't
really get much tomato flavor from ketchup at all. It's
just kind of its own thing, and there are a
(04:22):
lot of people who prefer the fresh tomato approach to
catch up, just like there are a lot of people
who hate grape flavored stuff but love actual grapes. I've
got to tell you, doing research for this episode was
awesome because it finally allowed me to corral a bunch
of unrelated, irrelevant facts. Today, ketchup is no fooling and
(04:44):
around a little less than ninety seven percent of homes
throughout the United States as and that number is held
steady for quite a while. It's thrown on everything. A
lot of people don't know this, but secret of Thai
restaurants often is that ketchup is used as an ingredient,
and you might not know it if you haven't seen
(05:06):
how the pad tie gets made. Of course, a lot
of people don't like ketchup associated with pad tie, but
people are sensitive about condiments. Some folks hate ketchup. Some
folks say, you know, ketchup as a child's condiment, right,
because it's so sweet. Some love it, but it is
often the first condiment young kids in the US get
introduced to. And a lot of people, you know, you
(05:27):
think of ketchup, you think, okay, how old can it be?
But today we are going to explore the real story
of ketchup, the real origin story. Modern ketchup wasn't invented
until the early eighteen hundreds, but it starts way, way, way,
way before the world knew about tomatoes. Well, I'm hoping
(05:48):
to that will shed some light on the different spellings
of the condiment catchup stylized as you know, K A
T C H G P I get Maybe I'm getting
that wrong, versus cat soup K C A T S
U P. Yes, yes, okay, all right, yes, you're art
(06:08):
is something here, so okay, if we want to talk
about where ketchup comes from, we gotta just forget tomatoes,
will introduce them in a second. Tomatoes didn't get across
the oceans from South America until the fifteen hundreds or so,
which is why a lot of you know, you so,
a lot of people associated Italian cuisine with tomatoes, right,
(06:29):
but that wasn't a thing in the fourteen hundreds. And
even after Europeans knew about tomatoes, which they sometimes called
love apples, they wouldn't mess with them because they yeah, yeah,
true story. They they thought tomatoes were poisonous. The roots
of ketchup, which have nothing to do with tomatoes, start
all the way back in southern China, far back as
(06:52):
three d b C. In fact, where they were already
experimenting with flavor in some very interesting way is typically
doing ferments. You know, we know, uh, there are certainly
there's certainly a kind of modern hipster sort of scene
for fermented foods, everything from kim she too, pickled vegetables
(07:14):
to whatever it might be. And if you've looked into
the history of fermenting, it really is absolutely ancient. Um So,
there were all of these different fermented pastes that were
being developed, let's just say, back as far as three
B c e using things like awful you know, meat
by products that maybe weren't necessarily tasty on their own.
(07:36):
But surely there's something we can do with these if
we just you know, bury them in the dirt and
leave them for you know, six months, and then see
what happens. There was a lot of sea there's a
lot of see what happens mentality, things like fish in trails,
and of course staple crops like soybeans. Yeah, yeah, this uh,
this stuff is fish sauce. Fish sauce is hugely popular
(07:58):
throughout the Pacific, right And I don't know about you, guys.
I love a good fish sauce as well. I've got
some of my own favorites. But this fish sauce was
called cootsy up or get up, which I know sounds
a little like black lodge backwards speech, but that's spelled
ge dash th h c u p or koe dash
(08:20):
h e u p. And this comes from people who
spoke the Southern Men dialect. They loved this stuff because
you could store it on long ocean voyages. But this
wasn't the only kind of fermented fish stuff. There's a
lot of parallel thinking in the world of food, especially
when people have access to the same ingredients. So other places,
(08:43):
other communities and civilizations that had maritime trade, they also
made fermented fish things, paste and sauces. Garum was a
fish sauce in the ancient Mediterranean. It was like the
fish flavored ketchup of the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks.
But Europeans, the ones who were, you know, making contact
(09:06):
with the Pacific, they didn't really know about this when
they found the Chinese sauce. In fact, Europeans probably after
a while, forgot it was from China at all, because
it went from let's see, you went from southern China
to Indonesia and the Philippines, and that's where British traders
found it in the seventeen hundreds and it had a
(09:27):
nice bite. It lasted again for long arduous sea voyages.
Why why wouldn't you love it? So they took samples
home and they promptly began to tinker with the recipe.
We're getting into touchy subject here and ald because we're
talking about traditional British cuisine, which isn't for everybody. But
(09:49):
I'm just saying I can't blame them for getting excited
about something with you know, a little more flavor to it. Fish. Yeah,
I want to point out really quickly a question that
I had that maybe folks out there might have. Is
garum related to the Malaysian Indonesian you know, Indian word
garam like garam masala, which is a spice blend. Um.
(10:14):
Garam is apparently the word from that part of the
country for salt um. So that spice blend, you know,
is is kind of meant to impart a saltiness to it.
And obviously fish has that as well. But a book
called The Fisheries of the Oriental Region claims that this
is just kind of more of a strange coincidence rather
(10:35):
than an etymological shared root. Nice clearing it up. We're
going to clear up a lot of stuff, you know.
So the British folks loved this because they thought it
was a new interesting thing to add to the flavor
profile of their foods. Still no tomatoes though, because remember
a lot of people thought these were absolutely poisonous. The
(10:56):
seventeen hundreds are a weird golden age for catch up.
They called it spiced sauce and uh. They applied this
fermentation process to every kind of ingredient they could get
their hands on. If you look back at old school cookbooks,
you'll see people were making catch up out oysters, mushrooms, muscles, walnuts,
(11:22):
celery fruits like peach, ketchup, plum and ketchup, which doesn't
seem that weird. I just don't know if it's for
me necessarily, And they would The way they would do
it is they would boil this stuff down until it
was kind of syrupy, and they would put they would
salt it, and they would just leave it alone for
a long period of time and then you got kind
(11:43):
of what you've got what National Geographic describes as a
flavor bomb in a great article by Jasmine Wiggins. Well,
one of the most important qualities of ketchup today is
that it is what is considered shelf stable. So you'll
notice that, like you know, at a lot of restaurants
and diners, the ketchup just sits out on the table
(12:06):
and they'll just refill these bottles and maybe they store
them in in refrigeration overnight. I don't know, but it
can sit out, you know, all day um without worry
about collecting bacteria or whatever. As long as it's air tight.
And that's because of this this process using the salt
essentially as a preservative. And as as we look at
(12:31):
this period of time, fellow ridiculous historians, you might guess
already if you just looked at this stuff in a
little ramikin, it is way different from the Hinds or
Hunts ketchup. You find shelf stable and preserved, like you said,
at grocery stores today. One recipe from seventeen thirty six said,
here's how you make ketchup. Swear to god this is true.
(12:54):
He said, take two quarts of really strong, stale beer,
and how off a pound of anchovies and boil it
and then leave it alone. I don't know if I
want that on a hot dog. I don't know either.
(13:15):
But you know what that does sound a little bit
more like is something akin to like worcestersh sauce, you know,
which you obviously can use in different ways. You can
use as an ingredient, or you can, you know, put
it on fries like malt vinegar for example. Yeah it's great,
but I mean we're getting into this area where there
(13:38):
was a sort of version of this that would have
been more regional, like every kind of you know area,
maybe have their own version of this stuff depending on
the the ingredients that were available to them. Yeah, exactly,
And that's that's what people had to do. Remember, there
weren't really global supply chains for fresh food or ingredients.
The only way you're eating fresh fish is if you
(14:01):
live near a place where you can get fresh fish.
So I have to pause and just ask a question
right now, and just let's go through a name some
of those different catch non tomato ketchup varieties and tell me,
let's tell each other together if you would try them?
All right? Number one lemon catch up? Yes or no?
(14:24):
I feel like it could go with some stuff. I
need more information. I lately have been I lately have
been using a lot of lemon, Like I'll cook rice
and use lemon zests and like squeeze of a lemon
in there. And I really like the brightness that a
lemon can add to a to a recipe. But do
I want a lemon sauce that sounds more like something
(14:45):
you put on a custard or you know, a cake,
rather than something you put with something savory, Because lemon
can be a very strong flavor. So even when I
put it in the rice. A whole giant pot of
rice will maybe only get the zest of half a
lemon and the juice of half a lemon. So you know,
I would assume that that that lemon catch up, by
its very nature of what the condiment kind of is,
(15:08):
would be very concentrated and probably a little much. Yeah,
I would. I would, um, I use limon all the time,
lemons and lines when I'm cooking stuff, just for that
that bright central note. But I also go a little
slow with it. I've done homemade preserved lemons. They've got
a kick as well for lemon catch up. I would
(15:28):
think maybe seafood would go nice with like a seafood dish,
but you probably wanna treat it like concentrated coffee and
somehow dilute it. All right, we'll not catch up? What
do we think? You know? It's interesting this also makes
me think of like different kinds of bidders that you
put in cocktails. So there is like walnut bidders, you know,
(15:48):
and there's like lavender bidders and different ones like that.
And that's also a very strong, concentrated kind of additive
that you'd really just want to put a couple of
drops of in your in your cocktail. I do like
the flavor of walnut, and I like like walnut dressing,
you know, Thanksgiving or things that it adds a real
UMMMI flavor, which leads me to Mushroom ketchup is one
(16:11):
that I would definitely be down. I've had it. It's
pretty good. I had it. I couldn't imagine that it
wouldn't be. Yeah, and then, of course, as any my
collogists can assure you people who study funus, um, it
depends on the type of mushroom, right, Uh, yeah, oyster catchup,
I would try it. I don't know if be a
go to. I've had banana ketchup before. I found it
(16:33):
pretty sweet. But that's what people were doing. They were
making it with whatever they had available and trusted already
as a food source. Here's an oyster catchup recipe that
uh that actually, let's let's give like three historic things.
The oyster ketchup recipe seems like pretty inefficient. Yeah. This
(16:59):
recipe that you're referencing, bend from the seventeen hundreds called
for one hundred oysters say, it seems like overkill. It
seems like you can accomplish it with fewer than a hundred.
But who am I to say, mixed with only three
pints of white wine, lemon peels, um with mace and clothes,
(17:19):
which I'm not crazy about, just in general that this
flavors not my bag. Um, I'm gonna say, how much
are you using this though? I mean a hundred oysters
and you're gonna have this for a while. It's not
like you're gonna be making this like once a week.
So oysters are just such a strong flavor. I just
don't understand why you would need so many. Wow, Okay,
I mean you know that is how you make concentrate.
(17:41):
Usually it's with like a ton of the stuff and
then you're you're boiling it down to its essence, you know,
and making like this literal kind of tincture that that
just within it is contained the power of two hundred oysters. Ah, yes,
that is a superpower of an obscure comic book rope
(18:02):
and Max Williams that's his real dame of your heard
it here first, folks, there was commemorative catchup. The Prince
of Wales ketchup was made from elderberries and anchovies. Jane
Austin was down with ketchup. In addition to writing Pride
and Prejudice, she liked to talk about how cool mushroom
ketchup was. But again, this stuff was more. It was
(18:25):
thinner than the ketchup you c today. It was dark,
and it was often added into like soups and sauces.
So to our point about concentration of flavor, this was
diluted in other things more like a hot sauce. Maybe
you might dash into something, you know, rather than dip
almost yeah, yeah, yeah, And I don't know where it
(18:45):
is in terms of concentration compared to say, sesame oil,
which I think is amazing and I probably used too
much of it, but my girlfriend is disgusted by the
smell of sesame oil. Really, I get it for you guys. Yeah, well,
it is strong and it's it's I wouldn't necessarily use
it as liberally as you might olive oil. You know,
(19:06):
it's more of flavoring than like an oil to cook with. Yeah.
I so maybe I've gone overboard within the past. But
I got a really great, um little kit from Momofuku
that included a little bottle of toasted sesame oil their
restaurant grade. Soy sauce and um a restaurant what they
call restaurant grade rice wine, vinegar, and then a bunch
(19:28):
of their chili crisp condiments that are just fantastic. And
the toasted sesame oil, you know, the bottles are they
have those little little daub little daver kind of thing,
so it really just dispenses in drops rather than like
filling a pan with it to like fry something. That's
the way to do it. To illustrate the picture for
for you guys, I I know I sent you my
(19:48):
uh my survivalist level collection of noodles. I have too much,
but I also have like a little gas can basically
of sesame oil. And it's not the first one I've
gone through. But you can make sess me catchup or
sess me flavored catchup, which I've done and it slaps.
I have no regrets. But now I think it's time
(20:11):
to introduce the star of our show. This guy has
been waiting for the right moment to stroll onto the stage,
and that moment has arrived. Let's hear it for today's protagonist.
You might know it, you might love it, you might
hate it. Ridiculous historians, Today's story the tomato Jersey Tomato
(20:32):
Man and idol Hope Potato on a New York Central train.
They no sooner left the station when they started conversation.
The Jersey tomato and the idle Hope Potato had no
reason to complain. Going west, they got to kiss and
(20:54):
through the fields of golden grain. That Jersey blood and
country smile put stars in those hid who eyes, and
the little coach made every mile seemed like it was paradise.
The wheels were ago, and then the whistle was blown
(21:15):
to the tune of Love's refrain. Tomato married the potato.
They have a tom tato with a little too to trade.
This is yeah, this is where he used to Yeah.
When I was a kid, I used to hate tomatoes
with a passion, and my mom loved them and would
just eat them by the slice, you know, just fresh, yeah,
(21:39):
little salt and pepper maybe, But once presented me with
it at the dinner table with a plate of sliced tomatoes,
wouldn't let me leave until I'd eaten one. And I did,
and then I also proceeded to vomit all over the table.
Oh jeez, you never tried that again. But now I
love them. I still won't really eat them on their own.
I need them to be salted and seasoned and on
a sandwich or you know, stewed or whatever it might be.
(22:01):
But I'm not nearly as averse to them as I
once was. That sense memory can be tough. And also
catch up catchup that was very pepper heavy, was a
common favorite during the Civil War, and even it's catch
up at such a weird history. So the tomato, though,
the tomato is to catch up today, what like it's
(22:23):
what electric guitars are to rock music. You can have
catch up without tomatoes, just like you can have rock
music without electric guitar, obviously, but for a lot of
people these seem like fundamental ingredients to their creation. I
think that's a fair analogy. And we mentioned tomatoes were
considered poisonous by Europeans for a long time. Historians suspect
(22:43):
that may have something to do with the acidity of
a tomato. It was messing with the lead pewter plates,
and so you would you would see, uh, this lead,
of course gives rise to lead poisoning, but you would
see the tomato touching of plates and it might mess
with the appear and so honored people might get sick,
so they avoided it until the first known tomato catchup
(23:09):
recipe appears. It's eighteen twelve. There's a scientist in horticultural listening,
James Mease. He calls tomatoes love avils. Please list don't
touch me tomato, please don't touched the domainto touch me,
y Amy puck potato. Don't goodness sake, don't touch me tomato.
(23:33):
And he put booze in his null that's right. He
puts meato pulp and like a secret spice blend and
a bit of brandy, which imagine would ultimately go on
to be replaced with vinegar, which this recipe did not have,
nor did it have sugar. But he was ahead of
the curve because he first mentioned this idea of way
(23:55):
back in eighteen o four, before he even popularized the recipe. Yeah,
and the brandy part might be a little bit shocking today,
but there was a precedent because people have been you know,
like in those earlier recipes we named pre tomato ketchup,
people were putting white whack plan in there and stuff.
(24:16):
Shout out to Tim and Eric. But I you know,
I imagine there are still simmering this down. Uh, so
the alcohol content would would be cooked out right, It
was more for the flavor and the preservative quality. Great point,
and I like that. You also point out that he
mentions the idea first in eighteen o four. This is
the reason food historians like Andrew F. Smith, who wrote
(24:38):
a book called Pure Ketchup, a History of America's National
Condiment with recipes. This is the reason Smith says Mice
probably saw French creole refugees from the Haitian Revolution making
something like this sauce. He got the idea from somewhere, right,
And if you just based on you know what, what
(24:58):
you had presented as that a original recipe, well, it
seems like this would be something almost closer to a
spicy like a Marian era, a spicy tomato sauce, because
it didn't have that stuff you're mentioning, vinegar. Vinegar is
the next key ingredient. Before vinegar was added in the mix,
it was really difficult to preserve tomato based sauces. They decompose,
(25:23):
they break down too quickly. Even now, if you take
a fresh tomato and you don't do any weird magic
to it, Uh, that tomato is gonna rot pretty soon, right,
I mean you've seen it. Anybody who's bought fresh tomatoes.
You put them somewhere and then you're like the countdown begins. Yeah,
even if it's just like in one little spot, it
(25:43):
starts to get soft, you know, And and the frugal
gourmet is among us. Surely have encountered a tomato that
was just experiencing a little bit of rot and maybe
sliced off that side and use the intact parts. I'm
not ashamed. Yeah, but they are, you know, they're already
kind of saw. Then it's the kind of thing that
when you're in the grocery store, when you squeezing tomatoes,
(26:03):
you want to know that it's not too soft, because
the software is when you get it. I mean, it
is interesting how the when we talk about a fruit
being ripe, that is also a term we used to
describe a corpse that is rotting and beginning to stink.
And the closer you get to peak ripeness is also
the closer you get to the beginning of rottenness. Yes, yes,
(26:27):
well put you can of course preserve tomatoes other ways
people can can tomatoes, but you can also preserve them
by making Ketchup. So until the preservation in the vinegar
really hits. There's a problem with Ketchup. You can't trust
Ketchup for at least a lot of us consumers say
(26:51):
both the pro and the amateur ketchup makers were struggling
to make sure you can stelete the stuff over time.
This meant that they were all kind two sketchy preservatives
that were put into it to make up for the
fact that sometimes they were using not the best tomatoes. Right,
you start with bad ingredients. You can get a bad dish.
(27:12):
Sodium bends away, coal tar, that's I know. Uh, And
so a lot of people were distrustful of this. People
had bought bad ketchup bottles before. So the Hinz company
takes the next step around eighteen seventy six. They are
the ones who make a formula that has tomatoes, brown sugar, salt.
(27:36):
Like we said an earlier example of mixed tape of
various spices and distilled vinegar. No, this is also the
company that introduces glass bottles. What a coup because now
you know, you're like you're at the grocer or whatever
you're buying catchup and you want to go for the
stuff that you can see before you buy it, so
(27:56):
it's no longer caveat and tour. They also call that
cats up. Going to your original question earlier, M, Yeah,
it really does just become kind of a branding play
to a certain degree. And by the way, Hines another example,
UM similar to three M where they're filling a need
(28:17):
for a thing that is now it has it's popular,
or the idea of it is popular, or the need
for it is popular, but no one's cracked the code
on it yet, and then they were essentially first to
market with the most recognizable and successful version of a thing.
And therefore also like Henry Hines, who's the founder of Hines,
great grandfather something like that of of Teresa Hines carry
(28:42):
John Carey's wife, so an absolute legacy, um, you know,
American family, um with massive, massive wealth. Yeah, no kidding, right,
And here's the thing they originally had called this stuff catsup.
Hines had What is the difference between cats up with
(29:03):
a C and catch up with a K. Well, they're
just different terms referring to the same condiment. Everybody, I
think knows that at this point. But it's more complicated
because there have been a lot of names referring to
this stuff over the years. Quick list to see if
any of these give everybody a chuckle uh warning they
(29:24):
get kind of susian. Here there's cat chop corn chop,
get zip cat soup, which sounds gross, catch shoop cot
pock cuts, puck cutch puck, and more. That's just a
list of a few. It's like a Willie Wonka song.
After a certain point, sure is um and again it's
(29:44):
sort of like a word that was already kind of
in the zeitgeist. Then you just kind of have to
create your own style on and the spelling, sort of
like sello tape versus Scotch tape or whatever, you know,
combining allaphane with tape and changing the letter. If you
get to it early enough, you can create a branding
(30:06):
that then becomes the stand in for like every other
version of the thing, exactly exactly, the catch up by
any other name, like a rose by any other name
would still taste is sweet. Hines did not start with
just one recipe. He had several let's call him drawing
board attempts. One of the first recipes had all spice clothes.
(30:29):
I'm with you, guys, I'm not a big clothes fan, Uh, cayenne, pepper, mace,
and cinnamon. But then he did a different approach just
for comparison or contrast, I should say, uh, there's another
recipe that at pepper, ginger, mustard, seeds, celery, salt, horseradish,
and brown sugar. So he was all over the place.
You know, you gotta try a bunch of different things,
(30:51):
just like our pal from the story about Scotch tape.
But there is something always mystified me as a kid,
and I suspect him not alone in this Hines fifty
seven catch up doesn't mean there are fifty seven different
types of ketchup or more. Does it mean it's the
fifty seven product that old Henry J. Hines made. No,
(31:13):
by the time they started putting fifty seven on the bottles,
they already had more than sixty different things that were
making the number fifty seven happens. Because all right, here's
the idea of the story. It's or so right. Before then,
he is riding a train in New York City and
he sees this advertisement for a shoe store that says,
(31:34):
we have twenty wanton styles of shoes, and he thinks, oh,
that's cool. Specificity. So again according to the lore uh,
and you can find this on the Hines website too,
he just sort of picked the numbers five and seven
because they were he and his spouse's favorite numbers. They
(31:56):
like the sound of them. And he said he would
later say, I did this because quote the psychological influence
of that figure and it's enduring significance to people of
all ages. So is he like a numerologist at this point?
I think he was just reading the tea leaves of
of of commerce. Uh. In many ways, he was just
(32:17):
a really smart kind of brander and and uh, you know,
I think having that number it is interesting. It sort
of reminds me of Basket Robbins and their thirty one flavors.
And with that though, it makes a little more sense
because it was a flavor for every day of the month. Yeah. Yeah, no,
that way makes way more sense. That's based on something
other than you know what number. I like five? Oh,
(32:42):
I like the number seven. I think we're done here.
That's kind of what happens. So this is also seven
is a cool looking number, that's is five. Yeah, and
they do style it pretty nicely with the font, Like
the seven is very sharply drawn. You know, it really
does have like a very striking look to it, and
(33:03):
it's it's it's just like a striking thing fifty seven.
It's just it's got it's got power to it. If
you ask me, there's a lot of power and specificity.
That's why I love there's a lot of Asian food.
I love where there are numbers in in the name
of the food. I'm a sucker for that because it
sounds almost more scientific, you know, it sounds established distinguished
(33:27):
as the word I'm looking for, like a Chinese five
spice for example, you know, yeah, or like three cup
chicken another great idea, but that's because you use roughly
a cup of a different three different ingredients. But this
is not Heinz's biggest breakthrough. That it's a marketing breakthrough,
to be sure, But one of his big breakthroughs was
(33:48):
not using crap tomatoes. These are riper tomatoes because they
add more plentiful natural pecton. This helped with the quality
and the preservation. But although it seems obvious now, people
hadn't really thought about it at this time. And then
as a result of this, over the years, catch up
(34:10):
becomes more and more popular throughout the US and Europe.
By h five Highs alone has sold five million bottles
of ketchup, and so many other people get into the mix,
and they're trying to differentiate themselves, which is why you
have all those other silly not quite catch up names
(34:30):
in history in the record. And around this time to
while all this has happening, we see a sea change,
or we see a condiments shift. It becomes easier and
easier to buy ketchup that doesn't seem poisonous or taste terrible,
and so people stopped making it at home. People started saying, hey,
the homemade catchup I make just doesn't doesn't taste right,
(34:54):
it's not as good. So then as a as now, honestly,
people have decided, if you can buy shelf stable ketchup,
why would you go to all the problems of making it.
As a result, US folks purchase about, what is it,
ten billion ounces of ketchup every year. That's about three
bottles per person. Yeah, that's true. It reminds me of
(35:14):
like on Great British Baking Show when they're like, we
want you to make a digestive biscuits and everyone's like,
basically a digestive biscuit is sort of the British equivalent
of like a Graham cracker kind of. But usually the
responses I've never made that before because no one would
ever make that, because it's much cheaper just to buy
(35:35):
the branded ones from the store, and they're better than
the ones I would make, and it's a pain in
the butt. So it really became you know, yeah, if
you give people a choice that's affordable and higher quality
or at least better tasting, because it's not like you
know exactly what's in it, especially when it comes to
that secret packet of herbs and spices, then they're going
(35:55):
to choose that most every time. Yeah, exactly. It goes
into convenient and consistency. And this is why now it's impossible.
It's virtually impossible to imagine catch Up being anything other
than bright red and tomatoy, despite the history we all know.
And I would say, it's almost weird not to see
(36:18):
ketchup in someone's house. And there are some restaurants where
you wouldn't expect to find it, right, but most restaurants
have some version. You know, you might go to a
really really fancy steakhouse that looks down on you for
having ketchup with the steak. People are particular about that well,
like Donald Trump, for example, is infamous for liking his
(36:40):
steaks well done, which is a travesty to any you know,
steak house proprietor you know of note, and also with ketchup,
there's jokes been made in plenty of TV shows and
movies where you got some person, you know, fish out
of water kind of story going to a fancy restaurant
and requesting ketchup to it's the maitre d or waiter
(37:01):
you know, gasps and clutches their pearls exactly exactly, or
very fancy Japanese steakhouses where you can only order you know,
one or two particularly cuts of steak and it is
only served with a dab of mustard. Otherwise you're a philistine.
I think you know, Noel Max, I think it's time
for us to get a little bit into the science.
(37:24):
So we've established that ketchup has these the roots of ketchup,
the predecessor of these ancient origins. In the Netherlands, there's
a sauce called ket yap k e t j a p.
It's an Indonesian soy sauce, but when you pronounce the
name is very similar to catch up. And uh, if
(37:44):
you look at how it's made now, you'll see it
varies per brand and type, but in general they do
some of the same stuff. They wash tomatoes, they ground
them up to a fine consistency, and while they're doing
this they remove some of the water. Water is an
enemy of ketchup, and sadly, like tomato is water. Yeah.
(38:13):
It's so interesting too, because I mean I made the
authentic comment at the top of the show that to me,
ketchup doesn't taste like a tomato at all. It's sort
of like, you know, grape flavoring, not tasting like a grape.
But there are tons of fresh tomatoes in a bottle
of of Hinds tomato ketchup, but it just kind of
(38:33):
becomes its own thing. But to that point, a hundred
and forty eight grams of tomatoes are used to make
just a hundred grams of the products. Yeah, yeah, maybe
that kind of answers our oyster question too. I mean
you yeah, yeah, you might. Uh well, the oyster ratio
was was a bit egregious. Yeah, so not at augh. Okay,
(38:58):
all right, well, old Max Oyster Williams is coming through
uh to maintain quality. We're just gonna We're gonna get
you an oyster subscription for Christmas Man. So you might
think catch up is a good way to use old
or low quality tomatoes, but it looks like that's not
(39:19):
the case here. If you want tomatoes for ketchup, you
want to harvest them in their prime and you want
to get them from harvest to production in a really
short amount of time. So big tomato ketchup brands will
often have contracts with tomato growers and say like, okay,
(39:39):
every season, every tomato season, you give us x amount
of your crop or maybe even all of it. And
farmers will typically say yes to that if they can
get good terms because they guarantee someone will buy the tomatoes.
So if you look at the main two ingredients, we
nailed them we as society. It took a second. But
the other two main ingredients vinegar sugar. You need these
(40:02):
to preserve the catchup. It's not just about the taste.
You're making sure the tomato bit doesn't spoil. And it
gets and will get into the science a little bit
about water activity. So water activity is a thing that
you need to know to understand how food spoils. So
low water activity means it's tougher for micro organisms to
(40:26):
contaminate and consume food. Well, just just think about like
standing water. For example, you know you're gonna get mosquitoes,
it's gonna start to smell if it's just sitting there.
So essentially, you know, water in a sealed environment is
the equivalent of standing water. You know, um, it's it's
(40:48):
obviously sealed, but it is going to make it more
prone to growth of of microorganisms and bacteria and molds
and things like that that are going to you know,
spoil the food. And the lower the water content, the
less likely um it will spoil in that way. So
like a low water activity, something close to zero means
(41:10):
there's not much available water. Higher value closer to one
means there's a lot. So when you're looking at pathogenic
micro organisms, the stuff that makes you feel poorly, stuff
that makes you sick, then we see that those little
buggers need a high water activity. And the water activity
(41:34):
of a fresh tomato is very close to one because
it contains so much water, but catchup has a water
activity closer to point nine three. Thanks to that sugar,
and thanks to that salt, this is still high enough
for a lot of micro organisms to grow. If you
put enough salt and sugar into these things to stop
(41:55):
all the growth, that catch up woulden taste very good.
So they he started like think of it. Think of
these preservatives not as a wall stopping all microorganisms. Think
of them as speed bumps that get higher hurdles that
the microorganism has to cross to grow. The next hurdle
is the pH value. Low pH value. Means of food
(42:18):
is acidic. Tomatoes by themselves acidic. Everybody knows. That's why.
I for're making a tomato sauce and you want to
reduce the acidity, you just pop a carrot in there
while you're cooking it and take the carrot out bai leaf.
Yes way, yes way. Yeah, it's very interesting. So with
that being said, um, why isn't there like an acidic
(42:41):
super vinegary kick when you, you you know, squirt some ketchup
on a fry. You know what? It's because of that sugar,
the oysters and the oysters max and the oysters. The
sweetness of the sugar helps mitigate or hide the acidity
of the vinegar. Nowadays, Honestly, a lot of ketchup manufacturers
(43:02):
will skip part of the process, so they'll have their
tomato harvesters take care of an initial step and they'll
just buy tomato paste or puree and convert that into ketchup.
That makes it easier. They just have to mix their
own ingredients to make the recipe, cook it, cook it down,
and fill it into packaging. But now I think we
need to talk about the color briefly, off Mike. In
(43:26):
times past, I think we've we've talked about that weird
period of time not too long ago here in the
US where different ketchup manufacturers were like, let's make it.
What green purple? Was that one? Yeah, it's bizarre. It
was like I think it was a hyans thing, and
I think you can still get them maybe, but I
(43:47):
just don't think who asked for that. That's sort of
the question there, you know, like who is this for?
I guess kids, But even with kids, the red color
is part of the comfort level, And it's sort of
like if you drink a thing that you think is
to be sprite, but then it turns out to be
soda water, it breaks your brain a little bit. So
the expectation of what the color of ketchup is versus
(44:10):
what the taste is. I think it's part and parcel
of the whole experience. So when you change one of
those elements, it can throw the whole thing off psychologically.
So it doesn't it doesn't surprise any of us. I
think that multicolored ketchups didn't really take off. But as
bright red as ketchup is, you would think that they were,
(44:30):
you know, stack in the deck a little bit. But
in fact, because they are using such fresh tomatoes, limiting
exposure to air which would prevent oxidation and therefore like
browning of the tomatoes, it gets that color pretty honestly, Yeah,
it does. Ketchup doesn't actually need a bunch of additional
colorance to be red. Use bright red tomatoes, you get
(44:53):
a bright red ketchup tomato. Some bullsh to red tomato.
Red tomato, my right, tomato. You can't pike micromato because
(45:21):
of the lycopene that's part of the tomatoes. That's what
makes them red themselves. And actually catch up processors try
not to use iron processing equipment because that can damage
the red color. They also try to prevent a lot
of oxygen exposure, because you know how apples freshly sliced
can turn brown when yeah, yeah, so tomatoes can turn
(45:45):
brown if they're exposed to a lot of oxygen and
you know, as they being cut up. But this Isn't
there a way to prevent apples from turning brown by
like putting a slice of lemon in with them or
something like that, or there's something that you can do
to keep them from turning brown lemon juice. Huh, I'm
looking that up. That's right. I think you're right. Also,
weirdly um avocados, as we know, you know, go from
(46:08):
being delightful and and and bright green to turning brown
very quickly too. But if you keep the pit inside
the half of the avocado you haven't used yet, it
will keep its uh it's color. Yeah. You can also
do that by putting them in a brown paper bag.
Is that weird? Uh? So we're so. I hope uh
(46:29):
someone is listening to this while they're cooking. Don't put
ketchup in your pad tie. Just know that's a trick
people do. We thought what better way to end today's
episode by doing just some tangents, a little bit of trivia.
This is the kind of stuff that we find in
our research that doesn't make it into the narrative but
captivates Noel and Maximize so much we want to tell
(46:51):
you about it. There is a retroactively applied reason for
the Hines fifty seven brand. They made a reason for
exist other than I like numbers. Uh, And it's this
hind spokesman a few years back told today Food the
way to get ketchup out of the bottle efficiently. There's
(47:15):
a sweet spot, you know, the the logo is kind
of on the neck of the bottle. What you have
to do is put a firm tap where the bottle narrows,
pop it on that fifty seven logo, and the catchup
comes out more easily. I had never heard this. Have
you ever heard of this? And not? Well, we're full
(47:35):
and Max is shaking his head. No, guys, we can't.
We can't regret the times we couldn't get to catch
up out. Now we just look forward to the future.
And I tried this over the weekend and it it
does work a little better. Still. Another interesting thing you
may be surprised we haven't mentioned already, is that Hyans
also invented probably no surprise, the catchup packet, the ubiquitous
(47:58):
catchup packet. It makes sense because while you know, certain
types of places that are going for more of an
old timey vibe and they even refill these still use
the glass bottles, like diners and such, if you're working
on a larger scale, it's probably more cost effective and
they'll be less like what's the word breakage? Literally, uh,
(48:20):
if you get shipped just thousands of little individually wrapped
ketchup packets, and Hines figured out how to do that,
creating that foil wrapper back in nineteen um and you know,
you will occasionally see ones of those that have leaked,
but it's much better to have a little bit of
leakage from what is ultimately a tiny amount of the
(48:41):
juice than shards of broken glass and gross sticky ketchup,
you know, all over a shipment because a glass bottle
broke or multiple Also a little more detail in that
statistic we kicked at the beginning, If every household had
a fourteen ounce bodily catch up, the combined weight of
(49:03):
all the catch up in the United States in those
houses would be fifty four thousand tons heavier than the Titanic.
That's a lot of catchup. I still I'm thinking, like
I found different different statistics for how many pounds to
catch up people eat. I don't know if we can
(49:24):
trust it all, so let's skip that part. But we
can say, andy, on a good note, as we love
to do, catch up might just be able to help
you live a little bit longer, because that likecopene, the
stuff that gives it that color, has also been linked
to reducing the risk of cancer, and it has the
potential to turn you into a werewolf. Yes, like like copen,
(49:49):
is that the same route as like canropy? Absolutely? I
do have one parting note for us, and it is,
of course the colored catch chips. I looked them up.
They were the blasting green and funky purple, and I'll
tell you right now, I found a photo of the
funky purple fries and I have to like turn it
(50:12):
off periodically because I don't know if you guys have
seen me over here, but I've been uh feeling so
not feeling so well because it is like the most
disgusting thing I've every What you call it funky? What
implies that it has spoiled? You call it something? What's
the other one? Blasting green they didn't even get Like,
(50:33):
blasting green sounds like a euphemism for throwing up. Yeah,
that that's what I'm That's what I'm about I do
from looking at this funky purple on some fries right here,
funky purple, Yeah, it sounds way more like the street
name didn't even get a literation done. And yet and
not not to ruin catch up for anybody, but it
really does go to show the psychological power of catchup
(50:55):
and then the legacy hold that it has on our
kind of psyche because so many people are like averse
to anything that even resembles blood, and yet they'll fully
go to a baseball game and slather a basket of
fries with what essentially looks like blood. Branding is so important.
(51:16):
That's why, that's why Coca Cola is never going to
change that red color, even though people don't associate red
with satisfying drink unless it's soda. Uh So here we here,
We're gonna call it today in the first part of
our ongoing mission to explore the history of condiments, we
want to hear what you think, folks, What should we
(51:38):
cover next? Actually, we want to hear from you, But
I also particularly want to hear from you know, and
you Matt, should we do the Should we do the
basic thing and go for mustard, like yellow and brown mustard,
or should we should we switch it up and find
a different condiment. I don't know, man, I think, yeah,
hot sauce is great. I do think mustard doesn't need
(51:59):
because it occup pies a similar kind of American you know,
staple condiment realm as as ketchup. But obviously we know that,
you know, there are fancy mustards and and that is
really something that ketchup doesn't have. So while there's the
basic yellow mustard frenches or whatever it might be, there's
(52:19):
also like Dijon mustard and and great poupa, and then
like really fancy mustards you'd get like on a charcouter
board or you know, more bespoke mustards. So I vote
we just follow it right up with mustard. I will counter.
I think, I mean this is from the years of
restaurant management. We gotta go with the godfather of all condiments,
which is the incredibly diverse of Mayo is in so
(52:44):
many things, and people don't want to. But I have
a buddy who, to the state, will not eat mayo
and will just slather honey mustard on everything, and I
don't want to. I feel them many times, like you
know what the primary greunion and of honey mustard is, right,
And then there's also a oli, which is what you
call mayo when you want people to pay more for it.
There's also when you say, I don't want to lose
(53:06):
this nol. Have you heard of most start to It's
not mustard? I just I just it was over pronouncing mostard,
but no, tell me about it's a. It's a It
does have a mustard flavored syrup, but it's an Italian
condiment made with candied fruit and mustard syrup. Most start up.
I know, I know, I know. I'm not sure about
(53:27):
that one. I know I'm on the fence about buying
a bottle. But if we can call it for research purposes,
I think we should get together and try it before
we before we do the next episode. But yeah, awesome,
let's do it. Uh the eyes have it will go
to mustard, then we'll go to mayonnaise. Uh, and you
know we'll have to get hot sauce, which is probably
(53:49):
gonna be a two part or spoiler because we got
we all have feelings about that one. But in the meantime,
thank you so very much to our super producer, Mr
Max Williams. Thank you to Henry J. Hindes. Thank you
Alex Williams who composed our track. Who else, who else?
Who else? Who else? Oh, thanks for talking food with me. No,
(54:10):
it's crazy that, Like sometimes we will just have food
conversations and then later we will go back and think,
should we have recorded that? Should that have been an episode? Hey,
you know there's always time to put that practice into practice,
am I? Right there? We go? Yeah, agreed? Uh, And
(54:33):
speaking of practice, we'll need to have our nemesses Jonathan
Strickland ak the Quister on air soon because he might
be a little rusty. It's been so long and now
we really need to do that. I mean, it's not
like it's it's not like we have pre conversations with
him about when these uh, these drop ins will occur.
It's really up to him. I think the man has
just been busy. Uh. He really is a force of
nature and sort of like a specter might haunt different Actually,
(54:58):
specters usually kind of tend to stick to one location,
so that wasn't a very good example. But it is
actually Halloween today, and I tried. Uh. Point is he'll
come one, He'll come, and we will cower. Yeah, yes
we will. We are not cowards, but we will indeed
cower for power for the quister. Uh. And along the way,
(55:20):
we'll thank Christo Rosciota, Steves, Jeff Cote and thanks to it.
You know what I'll say it. I don't necessarily agree
with the militant stance of the Chicago hot Dog, but
by god, I respect him. You gotta have a code well,
and hey, thanks to our research associate on this episode, you, sir,
(55:41):
Mr ben Volo. This is this is a real romp
and a and a gateway drug of sorts into the
wide world of condiments. Um. I look forward to it.
I want to do one on Relish, to do one
on Cole Slaw, you know. I mean, there's just so
many places we could go with this. We want to
spread them out, obviously over time, but for spread out
the continents, you know, I do, Max, and I'm glad
(56:02):
that you took that opportunity and jumped right on the
in there with it. Um. But we will do just that,
and until then, we'll see you next time, folks for
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com