September 8, 2025 • 24 mins
Ketchup. We all know what it is. But do we? It's not a thing. It's actually a category.
Where's the word come from? How was it originally used? When was the first ketchup recipe? How has it become the condiment we know today?
We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, authors of over three dozen cookbooks. This podcast is about our major passion in life: food and cooking.
If you'd like to check out our latest cookbook, COLD CANNING, please click here.
[00:55] Our one-minute cooking tip: Click on "like" for any online content you in fact like.
[02:18] All about ketchup! Where'd it come from? Where's the word come from? It's not a thing. It's a category of things. How'd it get to be the stick, thick tomato sauce we know today?
[22:02] What’s making us happy in food this week: Sichuan fish stew and Chinese food demystified!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
bruce (00:01):
Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is the podcast
Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
mark (00:04):
And I'm Mark Scarborough, and together with Bruce, my husband,
we've written three seven cookbooksand I currently have a cold.
So if you hear me sniffling, you'llknow exactly what's going on.
It hit me last night right after dinner.
It's like my nose stopped up andI started sneezing uncontrollably.
Well, anyway, a bad cold,uh, but otherwise I'm okay.
So this is our podcastabout food and cooking our.
(00:26):
Passions.
I don't know what our, our,the way we pay our mortgage.
I don't know.
What is it?
Something like that.
We have a one minute cooking tip,which is really not about cooking
as you'll see, but kind of, and thenwe're gonna talk all about the ketchup.
Mm-hmm.
Something that you may not know it'shistory, where it comes from, even the
weird way, the word formed ketchup.
(00:47):
And we'll tell you what's makingus happy in food this week.
So let's get started.
bruce (00:55):
Our one minute cooking tip support, food and recipe content creators.
mark (01:00):
And I just wanna say, I'm gonna interrupt Bruce for a second before
he says what he's ever, he's gonna saynext is, uh, we're not talking about us.
I mean, yes.
Thank you for being here.
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You are supporting us.
Just we're listening.
But I know,
mark (01:11):
but this is not a comment about support food and recipe content creators.
This isn't necessarily about us.
This is about what happenswhen you're on your phone.
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Yeah.
Don't scroll, stop scrolling.
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Better and subscribe.
The media landscape is getting more andmore fragmented, and it's important to
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use, the people you admire, right?
Because if you don't supportthem, they're gonna go away,
mark (01:37):
right?
You,
bruce (01:37):
it,
mark (01:37):
it's really crucial as you're scrolling, as you're sitting, the
air scrolling over your phone, andyou come across your content just
like it if you even like some of it.
Just like it.
Or if you really wanna go crazy,subscribe to their channels, Bruce.
Yeah.
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bruce (01:50):
to a whole bunch
mark (01:51):
and you'll see more and you'll help support these people who are the
new kind of, uh, wave of recipe creation.
Mm-hmm.
The content creators.
Mm-hmm.
So not really about cooking, butabout helping people who in fact
are trying to make cooking better.
Alright.
Before we get to the big part of thispodcast, let us say that of course, you
can support us by in fact, subscribing tothis podcast and writing a review of this.
(02:14):
Podcast and all those kind of things.
We've already, uh, basically done that.
So let's just get on to ketchup.
bruce (02:23):
What is ketchup?
It's obvious, isn't it?
It comes in those little foil packetsor plastic packets at McDonald's.
Oh, it does.
It does.
I thought it came in bottles.
It comes in bottles at home.
It's always sitting onthe tables and diners.
You put it on everything fromeggs to burgers to french fries.
Wait,
mark (02:38):
what?
You put it on what?
bruce (02:40):
Scrambled eggs.
Oh.
I grew up eating ketchup on eggs.
My grandfather put ketchup oneverything and I learned from
him everything, everything.
Every,
mark (02:48):
your grandmother, who knows what happened back there in the ettl.
Oh, oh, oh my God.
Um, alright.
Uh, so, uh, yeah, sure.
No, not eggs.
That's disgusting.
Mm-hmm.
It's good on eggs.
No gross.
But.
Let's first say somethingabout the name of this thing.
Ketchup.
Yeah, of course.
You probably know ketchup.
(03:08):
It can be spelled Kaupp.
K-S-E-A-T-S-U-P.
It's still pronounced ketchup,no matter which way you spell it.
bruce (03:17):
Growing up, what my grandparents had and they refrigerator was.
Catsup.
That was the big divide, right?
There was Heinz ketchup and Hunts catsup
mark (03:25):
there.
That's exactly right.
But mostly catsup, which is stillpronounced ketchup was the term
used for this sauce before 1900.
By the mid 19 hundreds, 19 50, 19 60.
It's becoming.
Almost solely ketchupwith a K, not catsup.
There was some holdover asBruces when we were kids, right?
(03:49):
That was cat sup.
But most of that has gone away and nowwe see some uh, gen Z entrepreneurs
of people who are making variouskinds of catsup spelling it.
Yeah, cat sup.
And I think they're trying to bethrowback and old school anyway,
no matter which way you spell it.
It's pronounced ketchup.
So I should say.
Where this word comes fromis really highly contested.
Believe it or not, there are alot of people who fight over this.
(04:10):
So let me just start.
I'm gonna start.
Mm-hmm.
With Miriam Webster, which isof course your friend, Miriam.
Well, we start, no, my copy editorfor our books always corrects me
about anything and says, well, ourfriend Miriam says, and what she means
by that is Miriam Webster definesword, when was Miriam alive, but.
Hundreds of years ago.
So, uh, it's Daniel Webster andMiriam, and anyway, it doesn't matter.
(04:33):
It's now Miriam Webster.
So the claim there is that it comes from amelee word, which is basically ketchup up,
or I'm nce, I'm sure I'm brutalizing it.
Ketchup and it means soy sauceor particularly savory sauce.
And if you know anything about.
Indonesian condiments.
This word has stuck around.
bruce (04:54):
Yeah.
And because the Indonesian sauce, thatis still called a ke cap, manis, and I
know that's not the way you pronounce it.
It's ketchup.
Ketchup, manis mess doesn't resemble whatwe consider in the West ketchup at all.
No, it's not a tomato base.
It's not that sweet and vinegarythick tomato thing that I want.
Oozing out of my hamburger bunand sitting on my french fries.
(05:17):
Oh, done.
It's a, my god, almost a sweetand thick soy sauce that catch
mark (05:22):
it.
My ass.
That was really too graphic for me.
Oozing out.
I, no, I just can't.
If you put enough,
bruce (05:26):
it oozes out.
Uh,
mark (05:27):
you know, when I was a kid, uh, if we dared to put.
Ketchup on a hamburger.
My mother drew herself upright andsaid, I reared you better than that,
because that was just considered so lowclass to put ketchup on a hamburger.
I guess
bruce (05:41):
us Yankee, New York liberals were just lower class.
mark (05:44):
You were lower class from her Southern Heights.
Anyway, legendary food writer,Elizabeth David, and culinary historian
Karen Hess, both claimed that theword catchup is actually from.
Arabic from an Arabic wordthat means pickling in vinegar.
Mm-hmm.
And it shows up in French asEs, and in Spanish as esche.
Well, it kind of
bruce (06:03):
makes sense, right?
mark (06:04):
They claim that this is the derivation of the word.
And when it was anglicized thatE es first syllable was dropped
because it was considered foreignsounding and you ended up with.
Kaveh or kave, which have slowlymorphed into what we now say is ketchup.
bruce (06:20):
That kind of makes sense to me.
I mean, 'cause every kind of ketchup thatwe're used to now, and we'll get to what
kinds there are all have a vinegar base.
Right.
They all are some kind ofly preserved something.
Right.
Right.
So that kind of makes sense.
And
mark (06:33):
I, yeah.
Also, it's just for the sake ofcompleteness, Hey, there is a.
Folk etymology, meaning it's notdocumented, you can't prove it, but
there's a folk etymology out of Cantonese.
That dialect of Chinese, becausethe word there used that is similar
to ketchup means tomato sauce,and it's actually derived from two
Chinese characters, foreign eggplant.
(06:54):
It was thought that the tomatowas considered a foreign.
Eggplant and this word then kind offused of these two characters, and
then it came to be tomato sauce.
But there's very little evidence thatthis is the actual derivation of word.
Yeah.
That
bruce (07:07):
I, I, I agree.
That's probably not really based inreality because there isn't anything in
the Cantonese world that I know of, of.
Course, there's a lot I don't knowabout, but I'm pretty familiar
with Chinese condiments and I don'tknow of anything that is a tomato
base in a condiment in China.
Sweet potato base?
Yes.
And soy, but not tomato, tomato.
mark (07:27):
Okay.
So that's where it comes from.
Now, lemme tell you about how it firstmakes its way into print in English.
It first appears it is wordketchup in the late 16 hundreds
entities, not tomato base.
Mm-hmm.
It is mushroom based and the firstderivations and types of ketchup
that come into print that we canactually trace are mushroom sauces.
(07:50):
One of the first published recipes isfrom Eliza Smith's 1727, the complete
house wipe, and she makes there inthe recipe a thin sauce of mushrooms.
Anchovies and horseradish.
bruce (08:03):
That actually sounds really good.
It also sounds like the base of a lotof modern steak sauces, doesn't it?
Well, it
mark (08:09):
is, and this is the thing that you should know.
A one steak sauce and other steaksauces like that are probably much.
Closer to the original notion of ketchup.
Mm-hmm.
Minus the sugar because Aone sticks mostly sweet.
It is sweet, right.
And if you just listen to me, mushrooms,anchovies, and horseradish, there
is absolutely nothing sweet in that.
(08:31):
That is a powerful condiment.
So it comes along basically as a really.
Thick mushroom and fish reduction until1812 when this guy James Meese, he's a
US medical doctor and horticulturalist,back in the day when you could be both
at the same time, he actually publisheda recipe for tomato-based ketchup.
(08:53):
And I really wanted read you thisrecipe 'cause it cracks me up.
So here was me's recipe in 1812.
Okay?
Already I'm gonna make
bruce (09:00):
this so I'm gonna follow you.
mark (09:01):
Oh God.
Please don't.
Okay, so he mashes up a gallon.
A gallon.
I'm just telling you what it is.
In the actual print.
Mm-hmm.
A gallon of chopped tomatoes.
Yeah.
bruce (09:10):
Got it.
No problem.
mark (09:11):
And he adds a pound of salt to it.
bruce (09:14):
Salty.
mark (09:15):
A pound to a gallon.
bruce (09:17):
Puffy.
I'm gonna be puffy.
mark (09:18):
Right.
So he mixes a pound of salt into agallon of mushed up tomatoes, and
he lets that sit for three days.
bruce (09:25):
It's not even gonna ferment this so much salt.
It's gonna kill even the good bacteria.
I don't know
mark (09:30):
exactly what he's doing here.
I think he's pulling a lotof the juice out, right?
He's
bruce (09:33):
definitely getting all the moisture out.
mark (09:35):
Okay.
Then you're supposed to dividethat into courts and to.
Each quart, you add a pound of anchovies.
Mm-hmm.
So a huge amount of anchovies.
bruce (09:47):
Is he adding filets of the whole thing with the heads and guts?
I think
mark (09:49):
it's filets, but I, I think so.
Okay.
Two ounces of mint shallots, and then,
bruce (09:54):
oh, only two ounces.
God forbid it be too many shallots.
mark (09:58):
Ounce of ground black pepper.
That's a lot.
That's a couple
bruce (10:01):
tablespoons.
That's
mark (10:01):
gonna be fiery.
It's gonna be likeVietnamese fiery pepper food.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
So you boil all that for 30minutes and then you add all these
spices, mace, all spiced ginger,nutmeg, coriander, and kaile.
bruce (10:15):
Oh, that's that red insect food coloring.
Exactly.
Except in
mark (10:19):
1812 when James Meese writes this, he means the insect illa.
He put the whole insect in, which is thederivative of the red food coloring dog.
Yep.
So you put a couple of those deadinsects in there to turn it red.
Oh geez.
They're dead.
I guess so.
So you pound it all together, you sveit through a jelly bag, you ba bottle
it, you cork it, and Meese claimsthat it will last for seven years.
(10:41):
What would
bruce (10:41):
a pound
mark (10:42):
of salt, it might, I don't know, a pound of salt.
It seems as if this is abotulism nightmare to me.
bruce (10:48):
I don't think anything can grow in a pound of salt.
mark (10:51):
Yeah, maybe.
Okay.
So then we we're gonna comeup into the late 18 hundreds.
So you say, what happens to ketchup?
bruce (10:58):
Okay.
So then by the late 18 hundreds, thisthin, runny, spiced tomato sauce that was
salty and peppery and fishy, um, it, it.
It's that way into the late 18 hundreds.
We get to 1913 and now Webster'sDictionary says it is a table sauce.
mark (11:16):
That means it comes to the table, is not used in the kitchen.
bruce (11:19):
Ah.
So it's, no, it's not an ingredient,but it is now truly a condiment.
Correct.
Of tomatoes.
Mushrooms, and.
Walnuts.
Yeah.
I love that.
Because walnuts, no
mark (11:30):
mushrooms have stuck around in this.
Mm-hmm.
bruce (11:32):
I Well, but mushrooms are so easily available, readily available.
At that time they were free 'causeyou go out and harvest them.
So mushrooms were a great ingredientfor big households, small households.
And I love the idea of walnuts.
'cause walnuts, when you pound them andgrind them, they give a thickness so they
can thicken, they add an earthiness, theyadd a great flavor, and they add some fat.
(11:53):
What they're gonna do thoughis they are going to add an
ingredient that can turn rancid.
So nothing is gonna last as long and it's
mark (12:02):
also gonna be grainy.
Yep.
There's no way.
It's not gonna be grainywith walnuts in you.
bruce (12:05):
No.
'cause they didn't have a neutral bullet.
mark (12:07):
No, they did not have a nutri bullet.
But you notice that in allthis discussion about ketchup.
We have never mentioned sugar ketchup.
As a sauce, mushroom or tomatobaze was not sweetened until
the early 20th century, and ahuge divide happens right here.
While across the world,it starts being sweetened.
Many forms of ketchup, forexample, today Australian ketchup
(12:32):
is far runnier than us ketchup.
Annie is far less sweet.
It's more sour.
So there, there's a divide thatstarts to develop between the thick.
US condiment, Canadian condimentand other parts of the world where
it's a thinner, more sour sauce.
Oh, so
bruce (12:49):
that fabulous 1980s, uh, advertising campaign for
Heinz Ketchup, would they usedanticipation, that song anticipation.
Yes.
Right.
Where they couldn't get theketchup outta the bottle.
They can't run that ad in Australia.
mark (13:01):
Well, I guess
bruce (13:01):
not.
mark (13:02):
So the initial industrial production, uh, of ketchup.
Involved sodium benzoate,which is a pickling agent.
You may know it if you ever picklefoods or ever read labels, but
sodium benzoate is thought to havevery adverse effects in humans.
And in fact, the US Department ofAgriculture will ban the use of
(13:23):
sodium benzoate as a preservativein the early 19 hundreds.
So now you gotta figure out how tomake this thing so shelf stable.
bruce (13:31):
Enter Henry Hines.
Yeah.
Right.
Who's he would be very proud of hiscompany and his children and his
great-great-great-great grandchildren.
Yeah, because they are still makingketchup after experimenting with
vinegar and sugar ratios that wouldallow his ketchup to become shelf
mark (13:48):
stable.
And he is part of the wave ofthe thickeners, the people who
start to add pectin from jellymaking and preserve making.
To make it thicker and thicker.
And also we should say that pectinalso has a preserving function, as
we know from cold, cold canning.
Yeah.
It has a preserving function.
bruce (14:07):
Yeah.
But today we kind of, most ketchupmakers have gone away from the pectin
and the way their ketchup is thickened,it was just by using a blend of
tomato concentrates, they often startwith tomato paste or even the double
tomato paste, which is twice as thick.
And yes, you have your vinegar,you have your high fructose
corn syrup or corn syrup, some.
Only use sugar.
(14:28):
And I have found even finds,there are some, has a sugar
only ketchup that's out there.
Uh, they have spices, onionpowder, and preservatives.
And of course they cook it so itreduces even more and it concentrates.
And then of course theyprocess it for shelf stability.
And it can last in your pantry coupleyears if you get a fresh bottle
off the shelf in the supermarket.
mark (14:48):
And you'll notice what Bruce just said there.
There's no pectin in that mix.
Yep.
And here's the deal.
Once more and more sugar was added,and then once it flipped over
to the high fructose corn syrupand corn syrup additions in some
types of ketchup, you didn't needthe pectin for thickness anymore.
The sugar gave it mm-hmm.
To it.
In the same way that like you can makeblackberry preserves without adding pet.
(15:09):
Thin and by just boiling it out inthe sugar and the natural pectin in
the blackberries makes it thicker.
Same idea.
And the corn syrup is particularly,makes it super thick as it boils down.
It does.
And that's part of the removalof pectin from this process.
bruce (15:22):
And ketchup has gotten to a point where it is kind of fetishized.
I mean, there are so manyartisanal ketchups out there.
Oh my God.
mark (15:29):
And some people, like my sister-in-law will not eat
anything but Heinz ketchup.
I know.
She won't even.
Touch any other ketchupexcept Heinz ketchup.
bruce (15:38):
I know.
I'm surprised she doesn'tbring a bottle with her.
She does.
mark (15:41):
She does.
I've seen her bringbottles out to restaurants.
bruce (15:44):
Remember that Seinfeld episode where they try and bring
their own maple syrup and they'renot allowed to bring it in?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You can't bring outside condiments.
Well, so speaking of maple syrup, maplesyrup is at a point where it's grated.
Right?
You know what's in it.
Ketchup is the same way.
So you can get a GR of ketchupcalled Fancy in the us.
In the us, in the us.
'cause the USDA is given that grade,and if you see that word, fancy.
(16:07):
On ketchup.
It doesn't mean that it's fancy.
It means that there is ahigher concentration of
tomato to everything else.
Yeah.
Which is kind of nice.
I
mark (16:15):
think.
I didn't, I know, I didn't knowthat until I did the research for
this podcast episode because I'veseen fancy ketchup on bottles and I
didn't know that was a, that was a.
Actual governmental, I didn't know.
Degrade of ketchup.
So that's basically how whatwe now know as ketchup happens.
But you should know thatthere are lots of ketchup.
Mm-hmm.
(16:35):
Remember where this came from?
Mushroom sauces.
Yeah.
With anchovies.
So lots of ketchups.
And I just wanted to, um, maybemention a few, and these occur
actually in our book mm-hmm.
Called Canning.
And I thought I'd let Brucetalk about them for a minute.
So talk for a minuteabout curried ketchup.
bruce (16:49):
Yeah.
So Curried ketchup is.
Is something that you findvery common in Germany.
Um, they eat curried ketchupwith, uh, sausages and avers.
You can, you can easily just mix a littlecurry powder into standard ketchup,
but we give you a recipe for making acurried ketchup, uh, from scratch, which
is, you know, you saute some onions andgarlic and curry powder and paprika, and
(17:11):
you have dried mustard and cloves andall those spices that go into curries.
And of course, there's a cannedtomato puree instead of sugar, we
use honey, which is really nice.
A little vinegar, some wor here,you boil that thickens and it's
really nice and it's nice to haveit on sausages or on french fries.
It's a nice change fromyour standard ketchup.
Okay,
mark (17:29):
let me talk to you.
Bruce is getting all excited aboutthe recipe as the chef always is.
So lemme talk to you about bananacatchup because that is actually in a
recipe in the book and we've actuallymade that in demos promoting the book.
Yeah.
So what is Banana cast?
bruce (17:41):
Well, it's a Filipino condiment and in the Philippines.
There's a ketchup that's made frombananas, and you know, in the tropics
you get bananas that are so much moreflavorable and sweeter than most of the
bananas we can get here in North America.
But still, and nonetheless, I triedto create a banana ketchup that was
close to the bottles of Filipinobanana ketchup that I have eaten.
(18:03):
And again, it starts by sauteing onions.
And here you get red chilies.
So it's a spicy thing and you have gingerand garlic and turmeric and all spicy.
It's a sweet, spicy sauce.
Island, you know, all those island kind ofspices and then very, very ripe bananas.
'cause you want that superintense banana flavor.
That's, you know, bananas have tobe one step away from fermenting.
(18:26):
Yeah.
Then have perfect.
Yeah.
To be as, as I always
mark (18:28):
say, these bananas are liquid.
Yeah.
They have to be, becomejust basically kind liquid.
So.
Okay.
That's, uh, banana ketchup.
Curry ketchup.
Now we also have a recipefor mushroom ketchup.
So what's
bruce (18:37):
that?
So this one is really, dates back, asyou said, centuries and I try to, uh.
To recreate what that originalketchup might've been like using.
And so it's very thin.
This is a much thinner, almostlike a steak sauce, ketchup.
And I put the, the mushrooms just plainold button mushrooms in a food processor.
(18:57):
And really you want to chopthem really fine and you put
them into a pan, you add salt.
Not a pound of salt, but for a pound ofmushroom, it's just a tablespoon of salt.
And you let that sit.
You don't put it on a flame, you just putthe cover on the pan and set it aside.
At room temperature, 24 hours, what'sgonna happen is all that moisture is
going to leach out, and it's goingto become something unappealing at
(19:20):
that moment, but it's gonna changebecause you're gonna add to that.
Malt vinegar and shallots and garlic andbrown sugar and thyme, and all spice and
cloves, and a little Worcester shear.
And you're going to cook that until itis just fragrant and deep and complex.
Thicken it with a little corn starch,and you will have something that's
(19:41):
not quite the old mushroom ketchup.
Not quite a steak sauce, but somethingthat is better than both combined.
mark (19:47):
So we also have in the book various fruit ketchups because there's
no reason if this is, uh, to use the19th century word, a table sauce.
This table sauce.
You can have plum ketchup, you canhave blueberry Chipotle, ketchup.
We have all of those in the book.
Yeah, right.
We have all those in the book.
And really, honestly, allthese things are ketchups.
And in fact, as I already said to you,steak sauce can be considered a ketchup.
(20:08):
Mm-hmm.
And we have a recipe for our mates.
Steak sauce.
What does it involve?
bruce (20:11):
Well, I tried to model this one on the classic A one, which
means we've gotta put in raisins,we've gotta put in oranges, 'cause
those are definitely in there.
It is a sweet and sour balance of raisinsdates, uh, shallots, garlic chilies,
molasses or black treacle if you couldfind it, which is a UK condiment that is
like molasses but thicker and more intense
mark (20:31):
with, better with bite trickle.
Yeah,
bruce (20:32):
there is some tomato paste and vinegar, and here's the key, the
orange zest and tamarind concentrate.
For that sour and fruity edge.
mark (20:41):
Right, right, right.
And it gets that very fruity stufffrom the tamarind concentrate
and that steak sauce like that.
That really classic steak sauce is infact, in the tradition of what ketchup is.
Yep.
Although most of us think of ketchup asthe red stuff that comes out of a bottle.
So that's our complete rundown of ketchup.
Anything else you wanna say about it?
bruce (20:59):
Yes.
I'm gonna say try some ketchup.
Un scrambled eggs.
Oh, do not put it on fried eggs.
That's disgusting.
You don't wanna mix ketchup into the yo.
mark (21:07):
Yeah.
Oh, there is such a.
Fine distinction between fried eggsand scrambled eggs and ketchup.
But yeah.
Right.
Ketchup
bruce (21:12):
omelet is amazing.
Oh
mark (21:13):
my God.
So when I met Bruce, he also likedsomething that is so New York to me.
It makes me barf.
And that is a jelly omelet.
Oh yeah.
Uh, that's disgusting.
Discu tell Jelly downthe middle of an omelet
bruce (21:28):
Concord grape jelly in the middle of your omelet.
Oh
mark (21:30):
my
bruce (21:31):
gosh.
My dad used to make that for me.
All right,
mark (21:33):
well I'm glad you have a good memory about jelly.
Disgusting omelets.
That's lovely.
Um, okay, that's all about that.
Just to be shamelessly self-promotional,our new book is called Cold Kenny and
includes all of these recipes and.
400 and, I don't know, twin 15 morerecipes for these kind of things.
Condiments, preserves all in tiny,small batches without the use of
(21:55):
any pressure or steam canner around.
So check out cold canning.
Okay.
As is traditional, the lastsegment of this podcast, what's
making us happy in food This week,
bruce (22:04):
I'm gonna tie mine back to our one minute cooking tip, and I'm
gonna give a shout out to a foodcontent creator, um, in social media.
Where their stuff always makes me happy.
And that is Chinese food demystified.
They have a YouTube channel,they have a newsletter.
Um, they have a Substack.
They, they're great and it's acouple, um, she's Chinese and he's
(22:29):
Western, but he speaks fluent.
Many languages in Chinese andothers, and they live in Asia
and their recipes are amazing.
And my favorite one that you're probablygoing to get in the next few days,
mark, is their Siwan beer, braised duck.
And he goes and stepby step how to make it.
And I love their stuff.
mark (22:47):
I do too.
And I'm gonna speak about anotherSichuan dish, which we had for
dinner last night, which was.
Bruce makes this, uh, fishdish, which is a soup, right?
Mm-hmm.
A little bit of a thickened soup withpreserved soured, mustard tubers.
Mm-hmm.
And we use, he uses, I don't do anything.
He uses ocean perch for it.
What else goes in there?
(23:08):
Uh,
bruce (23:08):
fermented, urging to chilies.
mark (23:10):
And, uh, lots of ginger and, uh, Chuan peppercorn oil.
Mm-hmm.
Over the top of it isreally hot and numbing.
It's a really tasty soup.
In New England, we have switched tofall, believe it or not, where we live.
It's cold.
It's gotten cold.
It was in the forties thismorning, so soup is on the table.
And last night we had an incredibly.
Sour Delicious fish soup that Brucemade, again, from one of the Chinese
(23:36):
content creators that he follows.
Chinese food demystified.
There you go.
He got it from there.
Okay, that's the podcast for this week.
Thanks for being partof this journey with us.
Uh, thanks for always making time for.
In your schedule
bruce (23:48):
and while you're out there scrolling and liking everything,
scroll around TikTok and find ourfeed cooking with Bruce and Mark.
We're putting up tons of videos onour TikTok channel, cooking with
Bruce and Mark, and unlike a lot ofother things which you may not know
are AI and they're not even real.
Ours is real, and it'll always be real.
No AI here on cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is the podcast
Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
mark (00:04):
And I'm Mark Scarborough, and together with Bruce, my husband,
we've written three seven cookbooksand I currently have a cold.
So if you hear me sniffling, you'llknow exactly what's going on.
It hit me last night right after dinner.
It's like my nose stopped up andI started sneezing uncontrollably.
Well, anyway, a bad cold,uh, but otherwise I'm okay.
So this is our podcastabout food and cooking our.
(00:26):
Passions.
I don't know what our, our,the way we pay our mortgage.
I don't know.
What is it?
Something like that.
We have a one minute cooking tip,which is really not about cooking
as you'll see, but kind of, and thenwe're gonna talk all about the ketchup.
Mm-hmm.
Something that you may not know it'shistory, where it comes from, even the
weird way, the word formed ketchup.
(00:47):
And we'll tell you what's makingus happy in food this week.
So let's get started.
bruce (00:55):
Our one minute cooking tip support, food and recipe content creators.
mark (01:00):
And I just wanna say, I'm gonna interrupt Bruce for a second before
he says what he's ever, he's gonna saynext is, uh, we're not talking about us.
I mean, yes.
Thank you for being here.
bruce (01:09):
You are supporting us.
Just we're listening.
But I know,
mark (01:11):
but this is not a comment about support food and recipe content creators.
This isn't necessarily about us.
This is about what happenswhen you're on your phone.
bruce (01:18):
Yeah.
Don't scroll, stop scrolling.
Like.
Better and subscribe.
The media landscape is getting more andmore fragmented, and it's important to
support the food and recipe creatorsthat you follow, whose recipes you
use, the people you admire, right?
Because if you don't supportthem, they're gonna go away,
mark (01:37):
right?
You,
bruce (01:37):
it,
mark (01:37):
it's really crucial as you're scrolling, as you're sitting, the
air scrolling over your phone, andyou come across your content just
like it if you even like some of it.
Just like it.
Or if you really wanna go crazy,subscribe to their channels, Bruce.
Yeah.
I subscribe
bruce (01:50):
to a whole bunch
mark (01:51):
and you'll see more and you'll help support these people who are the
new kind of, uh, wave of recipe creation.
Mm-hmm.
The content creators.
Mm-hmm.
So not really about cooking, butabout helping people who in fact
are trying to make cooking better.
Alright.
Before we get to the big part of thispodcast, let us say that of course, you
can support us by in fact, subscribing tothis podcast and writing a review of this.
(02:14):
Podcast and all those kind of things.
We've already, uh, basically done that.
So let's just get on to ketchup.
bruce (02:23):
What is ketchup?
It's obvious, isn't it?
It comes in those little foil packetsor plastic packets at McDonald's.
Oh, it does.
It does.
I thought it came in bottles.
It comes in bottles at home.
It's always sitting onthe tables and diners.
You put it on everything fromeggs to burgers to french fries.
Wait,
mark (02:38):
what?
You put it on what?
bruce (02:40):
Scrambled eggs.
Oh.
I grew up eating ketchup on eggs.
My grandfather put ketchup oneverything and I learned from
him everything, everything.
Every,
mark (02:48):
your grandmother, who knows what happened back there in the ettl.
Oh, oh, oh my God.
Um, alright.
Uh, so, uh, yeah, sure.
No, not eggs.
That's disgusting.
Mm-hmm.
It's good on eggs.
No gross.
But.
Let's first say somethingabout the name of this thing.
Ketchup.
Yeah, of course.
You probably know ketchup.
(03:08):
It can be spelled Kaupp.
K-S-E-A-T-S-U-P.
It's still pronounced ketchup,no matter which way you spell it.
bruce (03:17):
Growing up, what my grandparents had and they refrigerator was.
Catsup.
That was the big divide, right?
There was Heinz ketchup and Hunts catsup
mark (03:25):
there.
That's exactly right.
But mostly catsup, which is stillpronounced ketchup was the term
used for this sauce before 1900.
By the mid 19 hundreds, 19 50, 19 60.
It's becoming.
Almost solely ketchupwith a K, not catsup.
There was some holdover asBruces when we were kids, right?
(03:49):
That was cat sup.
But most of that has gone away and nowwe see some uh, gen Z entrepreneurs
of people who are making variouskinds of catsup spelling it.
Yeah, cat sup.
And I think they're trying to bethrowback and old school anyway,
no matter which way you spell it.
It's pronounced ketchup.
So I should say.
Where this word comes fromis really highly contested.
Believe it or not, there are alot of people who fight over this.
(04:10):
So let me just start.
I'm gonna start.
Mm-hmm.
With Miriam Webster, which isof course your friend, Miriam.
Well, we start, no, my copy editorfor our books always corrects me
about anything and says, well, ourfriend Miriam says, and what she means
by that is Miriam Webster definesword, when was Miriam alive, but.
Hundreds of years ago.
So, uh, it's Daniel Webster andMiriam, and anyway, it doesn't matter.
(04:33):
It's now Miriam Webster.
So the claim there is that it comes from amelee word, which is basically ketchup up,
or I'm nce, I'm sure I'm brutalizing it.
Ketchup and it means soy sauceor particularly savory sauce.
And if you know anything about.
Indonesian condiments.
This word has stuck around.
bruce (04:54):
Yeah.
And because the Indonesian sauce, thatis still called a ke cap, manis, and I
know that's not the way you pronounce it.
It's ketchup.
Ketchup, manis mess doesn't resemble whatwe consider in the West ketchup at all.
No, it's not a tomato base.
It's not that sweet and vinegarythick tomato thing that I want.
Oozing out of my hamburger bunand sitting on my french fries.
(05:17):
Oh, done.
It's a, my god, almost a sweetand thick soy sauce that catch
mark (05:22):
it.
My ass.
That was really too graphic for me.
Oozing out.
I, no, I just can't.
If you put enough,
bruce (05:26):
it oozes out.
Uh,
mark (05:27):
you know, when I was a kid, uh, if we dared to put.
Ketchup on a hamburger.
My mother drew herself upright andsaid, I reared you better than that,
because that was just considered so lowclass to put ketchup on a hamburger.
I guess
bruce (05:41):
us Yankee, New York liberals were just lower class.
mark (05:44):
You were lower class from her Southern Heights.
Anyway, legendary food writer,Elizabeth David, and culinary historian
Karen Hess, both claimed that theword catchup is actually from.
Arabic from an Arabic wordthat means pickling in vinegar.
Mm-hmm.
And it shows up in French asEs, and in Spanish as esche.
Well, it kind of
bruce (06:03):
makes sense, right?
mark (06:04):
They claim that this is the derivation of the word.
And when it was anglicized thatE es first syllable was dropped
because it was considered foreignsounding and you ended up with.
Kaveh or kave, which have slowlymorphed into what we now say is ketchup.
bruce (06:20):
That kind of makes sense to me.
I mean, 'cause every kind of ketchup thatwe're used to now, and we'll get to what
kinds there are all have a vinegar base.
Right.
They all are some kind ofly preserved something.
Right.
Right.
So that kind of makes sense.
And
mark (06:33):
I, yeah.
Also, it's just for the sake ofcompleteness, Hey, there is a.
Folk etymology, meaning it's notdocumented, you can't prove it, but
there's a folk etymology out of Cantonese.
That dialect of Chinese, becausethe word there used that is similar
to ketchup means tomato sauce,and it's actually derived from two
Chinese characters, foreign eggplant.
(06:54):
It was thought that the tomatowas considered a foreign.
Eggplant and this word then kind offused of these two characters, and
then it came to be tomato sauce.
But there's very little evidence thatthis is the actual derivation of word.
Yeah.
That
bruce (07:07):
I, I, I agree.
That's probably not really based inreality because there isn't anything in
the Cantonese world that I know of, of.
Course, there's a lot I don't knowabout, but I'm pretty familiar
with Chinese condiments and I don'tknow of anything that is a tomato
base in a condiment in China.
Sweet potato base?
Yes.
And soy, but not tomato, tomato.
mark (07:27):
Okay.
So that's where it comes from.
Now, lemme tell you about how it firstmakes its way into print in English.
It first appears it is wordketchup in the late 16 hundreds
entities, not tomato base.
Mm-hmm.
It is mushroom based and the firstderivations and types of ketchup
that come into print that we canactually trace are mushroom sauces.
(07:50):
One of the first published recipes isfrom Eliza Smith's 1727, the complete
house wipe, and she makes there inthe recipe a thin sauce of mushrooms.
Anchovies and horseradish.
bruce (08:03):
That actually sounds really good.
It also sounds like the base of a lotof modern steak sauces, doesn't it?
Well, it
mark (08:09):
is, and this is the thing that you should know.
A one steak sauce and other steaksauces like that are probably much.
Closer to the original notion of ketchup.
Mm-hmm.
Minus the sugar because Aone sticks mostly sweet.
It is sweet, right.
And if you just listen to me, mushrooms,anchovies, and horseradish, there
is absolutely nothing sweet in that.
(08:31):
That is a powerful condiment.
So it comes along basically as a really.
Thick mushroom and fish reduction until1812 when this guy James Meese, he's a
US medical doctor and horticulturalist,back in the day when you could be both
at the same time, he actually publisheda recipe for tomato-based ketchup.
(08:53):
And I really wanted read you thisrecipe 'cause it cracks me up.
So here was me's recipe in 1812.
Okay?
Already I'm gonna make
bruce (09:00):
this so I'm gonna follow you.
mark (09:01):
Oh God.
Please don't.
Okay, so he mashes up a gallon.
A gallon.
I'm just telling you what it is.
In the actual print.
Mm-hmm.
A gallon of chopped tomatoes.
Yeah.
bruce (09:10):
Got it.
No problem.
mark (09:11):
And he adds a pound of salt to it.
bruce (09:14):
Salty.
mark (09:15):
A pound to a gallon.
bruce (09:17):
Puffy.
I'm gonna be puffy.
mark (09:18):
Right.
So he mixes a pound of salt into agallon of mushed up tomatoes, and
he lets that sit for three days.
bruce (09:25):
It's not even gonna ferment this so much salt.
It's gonna kill even the good bacteria.
I don't know
mark (09:30):
exactly what he's doing here.
I think he's pulling a lotof the juice out, right?
He's
bruce (09:33):
definitely getting all the moisture out.
mark (09:35):
Okay.
Then you're supposed to dividethat into courts and to.
Each quart, you add a pound of anchovies.
Mm-hmm.
So a huge amount of anchovies.
bruce (09:47):
Is he adding filets of the whole thing with the heads and guts?
I think
mark (09:49):
it's filets, but I, I think so.
Okay.
Two ounces of mint shallots, and then,
bruce (09:54):
oh, only two ounces.
God forbid it be too many shallots.
mark (09:58):
Ounce of ground black pepper.
That's a lot.
That's a couple
bruce (10:01):
tablespoons.
That's
mark (10:01):
gonna be fiery.
It's gonna be likeVietnamese fiery pepper food.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
So you boil all that for 30minutes and then you add all these
spices, mace, all spiced ginger,nutmeg, coriander, and kaile.
bruce (10:15):
Oh, that's that red insect food coloring.
Exactly.
Except in
mark (10:19):
1812 when James Meese writes this, he means the insect illa.
He put the whole insect in, which is thederivative of the red food coloring dog.
Yep.
So you put a couple of those deadinsects in there to turn it red.
Oh geez.
They're dead.
I guess so.
So you pound it all together, you sveit through a jelly bag, you ba bottle
it, you cork it, and Meese claimsthat it will last for seven years.
(10:41):
What would
bruce (10:41):
a pound
mark (10:42):
of salt, it might, I don't know, a pound of salt.
It seems as if this is abotulism nightmare to me.
bruce (10:48):
I don't think anything can grow in a pound of salt.
mark (10:51):
Yeah, maybe.
Okay.
So then we we're gonna comeup into the late 18 hundreds.
So you say, what happens to ketchup?
bruce (10:58):
Okay.
So then by the late 18 hundreds, thisthin, runny, spiced tomato sauce that was
salty and peppery and fishy, um, it, it.
It's that way into the late 18 hundreds.
We get to 1913 and now Webster'sDictionary says it is a table sauce.
mark (11:16):
That means it comes to the table, is not used in the kitchen.
bruce (11:19):
Ah.
So it's, no, it's not an ingredient,but it is now truly a condiment.
Correct.
Of tomatoes.
Mushrooms, and.
Walnuts.
Yeah.
I love that.
Because walnuts, no
mark (11:30):
mushrooms have stuck around in this.
Mm-hmm.
bruce (11:32):
I Well, but mushrooms are so easily available, readily available.
At that time they were free 'causeyou go out and harvest them.
So mushrooms were a great ingredientfor big households, small households.
And I love the idea of walnuts.
'cause walnuts, when you pound them andgrind them, they give a thickness so they
can thicken, they add an earthiness, theyadd a great flavor, and they add some fat.
(11:53):
What they're gonna do thoughis they are going to add an
ingredient that can turn rancid.
So nothing is gonna last as long and it's
mark (12:02):
also gonna be grainy.
Yep.
There's no way.
It's not gonna be grainywith walnuts in you.
bruce (12:05):
No.
'cause they didn't have a neutral bullet.
mark (12:07):
No, they did not have a nutri bullet.
But you notice that in allthis discussion about ketchup.
We have never mentioned sugar ketchup.
As a sauce, mushroom or tomatobaze was not sweetened until
the early 20th century, and ahuge divide happens right here.
While across the world,it starts being sweetened.
Many forms of ketchup, forexample, today Australian ketchup
(12:32):
is far runnier than us ketchup.
Annie is far less sweet.
It's more sour.
So there, there's a divide thatstarts to develop between the thick.
US condiment, Canadian condimentand other parts of the world where
it's a thinner, more sour sauce.
Oh, so
bruce (12:49):
that fabulous 1980s, uh, advertising campaign for
Heinz Ketchup, would they usedanticipation, that song anticipation.
Yes.
Right.
Where they couldn't get theketchup outta the bottle.
They can't run that ad in Australia.
mark (13:01):
Well, I guess
bruce (13:01):
not.
mark (13:02):
So the initial industrial production, uh, of ketchup.
Involved sodium benzoate,which is a pickling agent.
You may know it if you ever picklefoods or ever read labels, but
sodium benzoate is thought to havevery adverse effects in humans.
And in fact, the US Department ofAgriculture will ban the use of
(13:23):
sodium benzoate as a preservativein the early 19 hundreds.
So now you gotta figure out how tomake this thing so shelf stable.
bruce (13:31):
Enter Henry Hines.
Yeah.
Right.
Who's he would be very proud of hiscompany and his children and his
great-great-great-great grandchildren.
Yeah, because they are still makingketchup after experimenting with
vinegar and sugar ratios that wouldallow his ketchup to become shelf
mark (13:48):
stable.
And he is part of the wave ofthe thickeners, the people who
start to add pectin from jellymaking and preserve making.
To make it thicker and thicker.
And also we should say that pectinalso has a preserving function, as
we know from cold, cold canning.
Yeah.
It has a preserving function.
bruce (14:07):
Yeah.
But today we kind of, most ketchupmakers have gone away from the pectin
and the way their ketchup is thickened,it was just by using a blend of
tomato concentrates, they often startwith tomato paste or even the double
tomato paste, which is twice as thick.
And yes, you have your vinegar,you have your high fructose
corn syrup or corn syrup, some.
Only use sugar.
(14:28):
And I have found even finds,there are some, has a sugar
only ketchup that's out there.
Uh, they have spices, onionpowder, and preservatives.
And of course they cook it so itreduces even more and it concentrates.
And then of course theyprocess it for shelf stability.
And it can last in your pantry coupleyears if you get a fresh bottle
off the shelf in the supermarket.
mark (14:48):
And you'll notice what Bruce just said there.
There's no pectin in that mix.
Yep.
And here's the deal.
Once more and more sugar was added,and then once it flipped over
to the high fructose corn syrupand corn syrup additions in some
types of ketchup, you didn't needthe pectin for thickness anymore.
The sugar gave it mm-hmm.
To it.
In the same way that like you can makeblackberry preserves without adding pet.
(15:09):
Thin and by just boiling it out inthe sugar and the natural pectin in
the blackberries makes it thicker.
Same idea.
And the corn syrup is particularly,makes it super thick as it boils down.
It does.
And that's part of the removalof pectin from this process.
bruce (15:22):
And ketchup has gotten to a point where it is kind of fetishized.
I mean, there are so manyartisanal ketchups out there.
Oh my God.
mark (15:29):
And some people, like my sister-in-law will not eat
anything but Heinz ketchup.
I know.
She won't even.
Touch any other ketchupexcept Heinz ketchup.
bruce (15:38):
I know.
I'm surprised she doesn'tbring a bottle with her.
She does.
mark (15:41):
She does.
I've seen her bringbottles out to restaurants.
bruce (15:44):
Remember that Seinfeld episode where they try and bring
their own maple syrup and they'renot allowed to bring it in?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You can't bring outside condiments.
Well, so speaking of maple syrup, maplesyrup is at a point where it's grated.
Right?
You know what's in it.
Ketchup is the same way.
So you can get a GR of ketchupcalled Fancy in the us.
In the us, in the us.
'cause the USDA is given that grade,and if you see that word, fancy.
(16:07):
On ketchup.
It doesn't mean that it's fancy.
It means that there is ahigher concentration of
tomato to everything else.
Yeah.
Which is kind of nice.
I
mark (16:15):
think.
I didn't, I know, I didn't knowthat until I did the research for
this podcast episode because I'veseen fancy ketchup on bottles and I
didn't know that was a, that was a.
Actual governmental, I didn't know.
Degrade of ketchup.
So that's basically how whatwe now know as ketchup happens.
But you should know thatthere are lots of ketchup.
Mm-hmm.
(16:35):
Remember where this came from?
Mushroom sauces.
Yeah.
With anchovies.
So lots of ketchups.
And I just wanted to, um, maybemention a few, and these occur
actually in our book mm-hmm.
Called Canning.
And I thought I'd let Brucetalk about them for a minute.
So talk for a minuteabout curried ketchup.
bruce (16:49):
Yeah.
So Curried ketchup is.
Is something that you findvery common in Germany.
Um, they eat curried ketchupwith, uh, sausages and avers.
You can, you can easily just mix a littlecurry powder into standard ketchup,
but we give you a recipe for making acurried ketchup, uh, from scratch, which
is, you know, you saute some onions andgarlic and curry powder and paprika, and
(17:11):
you have dried mustard and cloves andall those spices that go into curries.
And of course, there's a cannedtomato puree instead of sugar, we
use honey, which is really nice.
A little vinegar, some wor here,you boil that thickens and it's
really nice and it's nice to haveit on sausages or on french fries.
It's a nice change fromyour standard ketchup.
Okay,
mark (17:29):
let me talk to you.
Bruce is getting all excited aboutthe recipe as the chef always is.
So lemme talk to you about bananacatchup because that is actually in a
recipe in the book and we've actuallymade that in demos promoting the book.
Yeah.
So what is Banana cast?
bruce (17:41):
Well, it's a Filipino condiment and in the Philippines.
There's a ketchup that's made frombananas, and you know, in the tropics
you get bananas that are so much moreflavorable and sweeter than most of the
bananas we can get here in North America.
But still, and nonetheless, I triedto create a banana ketchup that was
close to the bottles of Filipinobanana ketchup that I have eaten.
(18:03):
And again, it starts by sauteing onions.
And here you get red chilies.
So it's a spicy thing and you have gingerand garlic and turmeric and all spicy.
It's a sweet, spicy sauce.
Island, you know, all those island kind ofspices and then very, very ripe bananas.
'cause you want that superintense banana flavor.
That's, you know, bananas have tobe one step away from fermenting.
(18:26):
Yeah.
Then have perfect.
Yeah.
To be as, as I always
mark (18:28):
say, these bananas are liquid.
Yeah.
They have to be, becomejust basically kind liquid.
So.
Okay.
That's, uh, banana ketchup.
Curry ketchup.
Now we also have a recipefor mushroom ketchup.
So what's
bruce (18:37):
that?
So this one is really, dates back, asyou said, centuries and I try to, uh.
To recreate what that originalketchup might've been like using.
And so it's very thin.
This is a much thinner, almostlike a steak sauce, ketchup.
And I put the, the mushrooms just plainold button mushrooms in a food processor.
(18:57):
And really you want to chopthem really fine and you put
them into a pan, you add salt.
Not a pound of salt, but for a pound ofmushroom, it's just a tablespoon of salt.
And you let that sit.
You don't put it on a flame, you just putthe cover on the pan and set it aside.
At room temperature, 24 hours, what'sgonna happen is all that moisture is
going to leach out, and it's goingto become something unappealing at
(19:20):
that moment, but it's gonna changebecause you're gonna add to that.
Malt vinegar and shallots and garlic andbrown sugar and thyme, and all spice and
cloves, and a little Worcester shear.
And you're going to cook that until itis just fragrant and deep and complex.
Thicken it with a little corn starch,and you will have something that's
(19:41):
not quite the old mushroom ketchup.
Not quite a steak sauce, but somethingthat is better than both combined.
mark (19:47):
So we also have in the book various fruit ketchups because there's
no reason if this is, uh, to use the19th century word, a table sauce.
This table sauce.
You can have plum ketchup, you canhave blueberry Chipotle, ketchup.
We have all of those in the book.
Yeah, right.
We have all those in the book.
And really, honestly, allthese things are ketchups.
And in fact, as I already said to you,steak sauce can be considered a ketchup.
(20:08):
Mm-hmm.
And we have a recipe for our mates.
Steak sauce.
What does it involve?
bruce (20:11):
Well, I tried to model this one on the classic A one, which
means we've gotta put in raisins,we've gotta put in oranges, 'cause
those are definitely in there.
It is a sweet and sour balance of raisinsdates, uh, shallots, garlic chilies,
molasses or black treacle if you couldfind it, which is a UK condiment that is
like molasses but thicker and more intense
mark (20:31):
with, better with bite trickle.
Yeah,
bruce (20:32):
there is some tomato paste and vinegar, and here's the key, the
orange zest and tamarind concentrate.
For that sour and fruity edge.
mark (20:41):
Right, right, right.
And it gets that very fruity stufffrom the tamarind concentrate
and that steak sauce like that.
That really classic steak sauce is infact, in the tradition of what ketchup is.
Yep.
Although most of us think of ketchup asthe red stuff that comes out of a bottle.
So that's our complete rundown of ketchup.
Anything else you wanna say about it?
bruce (20:59):
Yes.
I'm gonna say try some ketchup.
Un scrambled eggs.
Oh, do not put it on fried eggs.
That's disgusting.
You don't wanna mix ketchup into the yo.
mark (21:07):
Yeah.
Oh, there is such a.
Fine distinction between fried eggsand scrambled eggs and ketchup.
But yeah.
Right.
Ketchup
bruce (21:12):
omelet is amazing.
Oh
mark (21:13):
my God.
So when I met Bruce, he also likedsomething that is so New York to me.
It makes me barf.
And that is a jelly omelet.
Oh yeah.
Uh, that's disgusting.
Discu tell Jelly downthe middle of an omelet
bruce (21:28):
Concord grape jelly in the middle of your omelet.
Oh
mark (21:30):
my
bruce (21:31):
gosh.
My dad used to make that for me.
All right,
mark (21:33):
well I'm glad you have a good memory about jelly.
Disgusting omelets.
That's lovely.
Um, okay, that's all about that.
Just to be shamelessly self-promotional,our new book is called Cold Kenny and
includes all of these recipes and.
400 and, I don't know, twin 15 morerecipes for these kind of things.
Condiments, preserves all in tiny,small batches without the use of
(21:55):
any pressure or steam canner around.
So check out cold canning.
Okay.
As is traditional, the lastsegment of this podcast, what's
making us happy in food This week,
bruce (22:04):
I'm gonna tie mine back to our one minute cooking tip, and I'm
gonna give a shout out to a foodcontent creator, um, in social media.
Where their stuff always makes me happy.
And that is Chinese food demystified.
They have a YouTube channel,they have a newsletter.
Um, they have a Substack.
They, they're great and it's acouple, um, she's Chinese and he's
(22:29):
Western, but he speaks fluent.
Many languages in Chinese andothers, and they live in Asia
and their recipes are amazing.
And my favorite one that you're probablygoing to get in the next few days,
mark, is their Siwan beer, braised duck.
And he goes and stepby step how to make it.
And I love their stuff.
mark (22:47):
I do too.
And I'm gonna speak about anotherSichuan dish, which we had for
dinner last night, which was.
Bruce makes this, uh, fishdish, which is a soup, right?
Mm-hmm.
A little bit of a thickened soup withpreserved soured, mustard tubers.
Mm-hmm.
And we use, he uses, I don't do anything.
He uses ocean perch for it.
What else goes in there?
(23:08):
Uh,
bruce (23:08):
fermented, urging to chilies.
mark (23:10):
And, uh, lots of ginger and, uh, Chuan peppercorn oil.
Mm-hmm.
Over the top of it isreally hot and numbing.
It's a really tasty soup.
In New England, we have switched tofall, believe it or not, where we live.
It's cold.
It's gotten cold.
It was in the forties thismorning, so soup is on the table.
And last night we had an incredibly.
Sour Delicious fish soup that Brucemade, again, from one of the Chinese
(23:36):
content creators that he follows.
Chinese food demystified.
There you go.
He got it from there.
Okay, that's the podcast for this week.
Thanks for being partof this journey with us.
Uh, thanks for always making time for.
In your schedule
bruce (23:48):
and while you're out there scrolling and liking everything,
scroll around TikTok and find ourfeed cooking with Bruce and Mark.
We're putting up tons of videos onour TikTok channel, cooking with
Bruce and Mark, and unlike a lot ofother things which you may not know
are AI and they're not even real.
Ours is real, and it'll always be real.
No AI here on cooking with Bruce and Mark.
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