Around 300 BCE , hoi polloi in China were experimenting with making pungent pastes out of fermentedfish gumption . A few centuries later , the Grecian historian Pliny share a method to process Scorpio the Scorpion stings using the primer coat - up seeds of a vernacular works . These are the unlikely blood line stories of ketchup and Indian mustard , two condiments that people in the United Statesspendover $ 1 billion on annually . How did two condiment with thousands of years of story between them become associated with red-hot dogs and beefburger ?
Mustard: From Medicine to Tasty Treat
Mustard has been around for a while — in fact , the plant life the condiment comes from may have been among thefirst cropsever cultivated .
There are multiple specie of mustard — most are members of theBrassicaorSinapisgenera — and the plant ( which is closely related tobroccoliand cabbage ) and its seeds first appear in the archaeological record in China around 6800 years ago . Before they became a condiment , the seeded player harvest from the plant were used as a spice and a practice of medicine ; Native American and Sumerian text from around 2000 BCEmentionthem in this context of use .
The paste - same form of mustard greens showed up roughly 2500 years ago . The Greeks and Romans blended ground - up Indian mustard seed with sweet grape succus , ormust , to make a smooth mix . The first version of this concoction was n’t necessarily food — it may have been used more for its medicinal property , and not completely without intellect : Mustard seeds are rich in chemical compound calledglucosinolates , and when these mote get broken down , they produceisothiocyanates , hefty antioxidants that fightinflammationand give mustard its nose - tinglingkick .
The Greeks and Romans use mustard ’s medicative properties to almost every ailment imaginable — Hippocrates even praised its power to sootheaches and pain . Many of mustard ’s historical uses do n’t book up to modern science — for example , it ’s not a cure for epilepsy , as theRomansonce believed — but it ’s still used as a holistic treatment forarthritis , back pain , and even tender throats .
While experimenting with table mustard as music , the Greeks and Romans discovered that powderize mustard seminal fluid were fairly tasty . In the first century CE , papistic husbandry writer Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella published the first recorded recipe for mustard greens as a condiment in his tomeDe Re Rustica . It ring for an acid and ground mustard seeds — the samebasic formulathat ’s used to make mustard today .
Ketchup: From Fish Sauce to Plum Paste
Meanwhile , the phylogenesis of another pop condiment was underway halfway across the cosmos .
Ketchup first appear in China around300 BCE . In the Amoy dialect of Chinese , kôe - chiapmeans " the brine of pickled fish,“according to the Oxford English Dictionary . Nineteenth century ethnologist Terrien de Lacouperie think the word might have come from a Chinese biotic community living outdoors of China . In any case , the name is fairly much the only thing that reading of tomato ketchup had in vulgar with the nursing bottle of ruby-red stuff and nonsense in your electric refrigerator . It was actually much more like garum , a Mediterranean Pisces the Fishes sauce that was once wildly popular in Ancient popish culinary art . ( Modern reading of garum can actually be found today in high - end eating house like Denmark’sNoma . ) Some have even suggested that Asian fish sauce is adescendantof garum .
The Chinese fish sauce have it away as ketchup was belike made by fermenting ingredients like Pisces entrails , soya , andmeat byproducts . Fermentation creates byproduct that can be of capital interest to human being . One such spin-off is the ethanol that render us beer and wine through alcohol fermentation . Another is monosodium glutamate , also love asMSG . A lot of theory wing around about MSG , but it ’s worth channelize out that glutamates look naturally in all sort of foods , from tomatoes to beef to parmesan cheese . Our own bodies acquire glutamate . And MSG can give foods a piquant , concentrated - to - define flavor calledumami .
The fish paste that was created by fermentation possessed this umami , and was used to tot a salty , savory depth of tang to a variety of peach . And because fermentation can spawn so - visit “ good ” microorganisms while inhibiting the growth of the bad bacterium that cause intellectual nourishment to rot , this version of ketchup could be stored on shipsfor monthswithout spoiling , an significant factor at a prison term when craft route could take month to traverse .
As ketchup spread to different office of the orb , it went through a few transformations . swop route bear it to Indonesia and the Philippines , and it was potential around this part of the globe thatBritish tradersdiscovered and fall in love with the funky seasoner . And as soon as catsup down in Great Britain in the early 1700s , Western cooks found ways to make it their own . One of the first English recipe for catsup , published in Eliza Smith ’s 1727 bookThe Compleat Housewife , call for anchovies , shallot , ginger , garlic clove , and horseradish .
Some recipes used oysters as the seafood component , while others cut the fish out of the fish sauce totally . Popular bases for ketchup around this time include peach , plums , cultivated celery seed , mushroom-shaped cloud , nuts , lemon , and beer . Like their forerunner , these sauces were often piquant , flavorful , and had a long shelf - life-time , but beyond that , they could deviate greatly . The wordketchupevolved into a catch - all term for anyspiced condimentserved with a meal—“spiced " bring up to factor like cinnamon or nutmeg rather than heat point . Walnutis said to have been Jane Austen ’s pet ketchup assortment .
A Mustard Makeover
Mustard receive its own makeover when it was imported to dissimilar parts of Europe . The Romans invaded the land now know as France in the 1st century BCE , and the mustard seed they brought with them thrived in the region’sfertile soil . topical anaesthetic , including the monks live in the Frenchcountryside , loved the newfangled condiment , and by the 9th century , monasterieshad work mustard production into a major source of income .
Mustard see its way into less lowly setting as well . Pope John XXIIwas said to be such a buff that he appoint aGrand Moutardier du Pape , or “ Grand Mustard - Makerto the Pope . ” John XXII was one of the Avignon Alexander Pope , who lived in what is now France rather than Rome , and he create the mustard - making place specially for his unemployed nephew who lived in Dijon , which was already the Indian mustard capital of France by the fourteenth century .
Even French royalty developed a taste for mustard greens . King Louis XImade it an essential part of his dieting , going so far as to journey with a personal pot of the sauce so he ’d never have to corrode a meal without it .
Dijon’s Secret Ingredient
There are many type ofmustard — xanthous , spicy brown , English , Chinese , and German , to name a few . But to some condiment connoisseurs , mustard is still synonymous with the creamy Dijon variety that first took clench of France centuries ago .
In1634 , it was declare that truthful French mustard could only be made in Dijon . The formula was an important part of French cuisine , but as one innovator proved , there was still way leave for improvement .
Dijon nativeJean Naigeon potter with the convention in 1752 , swapping the traditional vinegar withverjuice , or the turned succus of unripened grapes . The simple change give dijon the smooth taste andcreamy texturethat ’s link with the product today . Most innovative dijon use white wine or vino vinegar to simulate that original verjuice flavor . And most of it is n’t made in Dijon . Unlike bubbly or Parmigiano - Reggiano , which must descend from the sphere who lend their names to the products , dijon no longer enjoys “ protected designation of origin ” position .
The dijon you ’re most likely to find in your local supermarket is probably Grey Poupon . In 1866 , inventor Maurice Grey team up up with moneyman Auguste Poupon to revolutionise the mustard world . Grey ’s automate mustard - make motorcar convey the artisan merchandise into the Industrial Age . Today , most Grey - Poupon mustard is made inAmerican factories .
Ketchup and “Love Apples”
While mustard was expand , ketchup was still figuring out how it would leave its mark on the white T - shirt of account . And after arriving in America by way of British settlement , the sauce joined forces with the factor that would define it for decades to come : the tomato .
The British had experiment with turning nearly everything they could discover into ketchup , but tomatoes were the exception — at least in part because the New World fruit was believe , by some , to be poisonous when it was first infix to Europe by explorers in the 16th century . It ’s potential that some wealthy English hoi polloi did get sick from eating tomato , though not for the reasons they suspect . If they were eating offlead and pewter plates , the acid from the tomatoesmayhave leached lead into their intellectual nourishment , thus give them a font of lead poisoning they might have mistaken for Lycopersicon esculentum poisoning . A lot of food historians doubt how much influence this could have had on public sensing , though , debate that lead toxic condition takes too foresighted to develop to get connected to any single dish . Instead , it could just be that tomatoes looked like flora that Europeans knew were venomous , and so were brand with guilt by association . The bottom line is , the reasons are contest , but by the late sixteenth hundred , you could unquestionably find anti - tomato texts in English .
This misconception about the risks of tomatoes may have persisted among English Americans if it were n’t for the campaign of some passionatetomato advocates . One of these social reformer was Philadelphia scientist and horticulturist James Mease . He referred to tomatoes as “ love apples , ” and in 1812 , he published thefirst know recipefor tomato ketchup .
Sadly , the namelove applesdidn’t joint , but tomato ketchup did . citizenry with fear about tomatoes feel safer deplete them inprocessed form . And cetchup may have gotten an assist from a spot of old - fashioned quackery . Dr. John Cook Bennett touted tomato as a cure for maladies ranging from diarrhea toindigestion . He published his own recipes for tomato tomato ketchup , and eventually the product was being sold in pill soma as patent medicament , aid to sway public perception about the benefit of tomatoes .
In reality , though , early tomato cetchup was really less safe than tomatoes from the vine . The first commercial products were poorly keep up , resulting in jarful that were teem withbacteria — and not the good kind . Some manufacturers slue corners by pumping the condiment with life-threatening degree of stilted preservatives . ember tar was also added to ketchup to give it its red vividness .
It was the Heinz caller that was for the most part responsible for lift ketchup from potential botulism - in - a - bottle to staple condiment .
Heinz’s Ketchup Innovation
Pennsylvania entrepreneur Henry J. Heinz fuck off his first in the condiment business in1869by devising and selling his mother ’s horseradish formula . Seven years by and by , he saw an opportunity to bring some must - needed quality to the catsup market . The first bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup attain stores in 1876 , and in the class that followed , they would do several things to set themselves apart from the competition .
For starters , Heinz got rid of the coal tar . Instead , he go distilled acetum with ripe , fresh tomatoes . His chemical formula was shelf - stable and it tasted in force , but that alone may not have been enough to make Heinz a household name . Arguably the bighearted change he made was packaging his mathematical product in clear , Methedrine bottles . Before that , cetchup had been sold inbrown bottlesto shroud its poor caliber . With Heinz , client love exactly what they were getting .
The Heinz ketchup bottle is one of the most iconic pieces of food packaging ever created , and it ’s in all probability shaped your perception of the product . This go even to the spelling of the Christian Bible . If you pen C - A - T - S - U - P you may get funny looks , but it ’s a perfectly valid old spelling for the word , and for year was really the choose spelling in America . Heinz label his condiment cetchup with a K as another way of life to differentiate it from its catsup with a C counterparts . Today Heinz ’s translation is wide regarded as the right spelling .
Yellow Mustard and the Hot dog: A Match Made in Culinary Heaven
Mustard also arrived in America shortly after the first European settlers did , but All - American yellow table mustard did n’t appear until much later — at the World ’s Fair in St. Louis in1904 , when the R.T. French Company debut its Modern “ emollient salad mustard . ”
distrait fairgoers may have overlooked the product if it was n’t for a exceptional new factor . Mustard is naturally brown or beige , but Brothers George and Francis French addedturmericto their mustard to give it a atomic number 10 yellow feel .
For a canvas to showcase their condiment , the Frenches chose the spicy blackguard — a dish that wasfairly newto Americans at the time . The R.T. French Company ’s cream salad leaf mustard , or French ’s yellow Indian mustard , is still a authoritative spicy dog top more than century later .
tomato ketchup and mustard have no doubt secure their place as culinary heavyweights . Surprisingly , though , neither production is the top - selling condiment in the U.S. That distinction belongs to ranch dressing , which is a$1 billion industryas of 2019 .
