Ingredient: Tomato Ketchup
Category: Condiments
Season: All
Ketchup (or less commonly catsup), also known as Tomato Ketchup, Tomato Sauce, Red Sauce, Tommy Sauce, Tommy K, or Dead Horse, is a condiment, usually made from tomatoes.
The ingredients in a typical modern ketchup are tomato concentrate, spirit vinegar, corn syrup or other sugar, salt, spice and herb extracts (including celery), spice and garlic powder, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, onion, and other vegetables may be included.
Ketchup started out as a general term for sauce, typically made of mushrooms or fish brine with herbs and spices.
Some popular early main ingredients included: blueberry, anchovy, oyster, lobster, walnut, kidney bean, cucumber, cranberry, lemon, celery and grape.
Mushroom ketchup is still available in some countries, such as the UK, and banana ketchup is popular in the Philippines.
Uses
Ketchup is often used with chips (French fries), hamburgers, sandwiches and grilled or fried meat.
Ketchup with mayonnaise, forms the base of Thousand Island dressing and fry sauce.
Ketchup is also typically used as a base for barbecue sauce, especially in the Southern United States.
Origins
Ketchup-like sauces originated in Eastern Asia as a fish sauce, long before anyone outside the Americas had ever seen a tomato.
The word "ketchup" is used in Chinese, Malay, and Indonesian (e.g., kecap manis, traditional spelling kitjap manis).
English and Dutch sailors brought the Asian styled ketchup to Europe, where flavourings, such as mushrooms, anchovies and nuts, were added to the basic fish sauce.
Ketchup, as it is eaten today, first appeared in American cookbooks during the early 19th century
Until Heinz, most commercial ketchups appealed to two of the basic tastes: bitterness and saltiness .
The switch to ripe tomatoes and more tomato solids added savouriness, and the major increase in the concentration of vinegar added sourness and pungency to the range of sensations experienced during its consumption.
The elimination of benzoate, was also accompanied by a doubling of the sweetness of ketchup , a balanced stimulation of all five types of taste sensations produced an almost gestalt effect. |