Few people know that the common name for all varieties of today's popular tomato sauce - ketchup - did not initially imply the presence of a tomato in it. And the homeland of the seasoning with this name is China.
If we are to make complaints about ketchup, in which fruit puree makes up a large part, then a purely tomato product should also be criticized. After all, one of the most popular modern food products - ketchup was originally a seafood and salt sauce.
Is ketchup an invention of the Chinese or the Malays?
Scientists argue that the English language, which today occupies a leading position as a means of international communication, has actually absorbed more than 500 other languages. Most of this confusion occurred as a result of trade and attempts by the British to expand their territorial possessions. It is known that in the Middle Ages, the Malay market language, Pidgin, was common in eastern India and southwestern Malaysia.
Traders from Western Europe tried by all means to make their way there, since many spices, including black pepper, were equivalent to international currency. First, the Arabs, Dutch, Portuguese, and then, in the 18th century, and the British purposefully deprived Indian merchants of their "tidbit". Several islands became British possessions, among which were Singapore and Penang. Therefore, it is not surprising that many words of the Malay language did not enter English directly, but through the Dutch and Portuguese languages.
Linguists agree that English ketchup is a derivative of the Malay kechap, which most likely was borrowed from the Chinese dialect, because there are many ethnic groups that speak Chinese in the territory of modern Malaysia. Whether the ketchup got to the British from Malaysia or from China, on the territory of which the British East India Company, created in 1600, also attempted, is now difficult to establish. But the fact that the Chinese have been making a sauce called koe-chiap or koe-tsiap for thousands of years is absolutely true.
The first part of this complex combination is translated as "salmon or salmon" (in other words, fish), and the second is brine. In the ancient recipe from 554, there are no spices other than salt. For the preparation of fish sauce, it is recommended to take not even the fish itself, but its insides: intestines, bladders of yellow fish (mullet, shark). The washed ingredients need to be salted and left in a tightly closed container in the sun for 20 days. In the cold season, cooking took three times longer.
Wonderful transformations of fish sauce into tomato sauce
However, when the British tasted foreign ketchup, it already contained many more components: anchovies, shellfish, hot spices. But he was still preparing by fermentation. To add legumes, nuts, mushrooms and even beer to ketchup was already invented by the British themselves, who began to prepare this sauce in their homeland. Moreover, all these products eventually ousted fish from the composition altogether. In a word, only the name remains of the fish sauce. So ketchup would have existed in this form for many more centuries, if after 200 years they had not thought of adding tomatoes to it.
The first edition to publicize a tomato ketchup recipe is Mary Randolph's cookbook, published in 1824. In the second half of the 20th century, the production of tomato ketchup took on an industrial scale in the United States, but its production was associated with unsanitary conditions. In addition, the finished product was perishable. Henry Heinz managed to reverse this situation in 1876, who began to use the method of vacuum evaporation without heating in the production of tomato ketchup. As a result, thick ketchup could last longer even at room temperature.
Today, many manufacturers add starch, flour, gum or pectin for a thick consistency, and along with tomato paste, they use apple, beet or plum puree. Unfortunately, it cannot do without dyes, thickeners and preservatives of an unnatural nature. Even in extra-class ketchup, the share of tomato paste is only 40%, and in economy class it is 15%. As part of modern ketchup, it is allowed to use chopped pickled vegetables, herbs and ground hot spices.
