Ketchup? Catsup? Ke-cap? / Whatever the name, a squirt of red can change everything

08/27/03 | Color | Advance | 10" | | Food | hulda 6003 | {082103_ketchup27_kocihernandez} 08/27/03 | Color | Advance | 10" | | Food | hulda 6003 | {082103_ketchup27_kocihernandez} Photo: CHRISTINA KOCI HERNANDEZ Photo: CHRISTINA KOCI HERNANDEZ Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Ketchup? Catsup? Ke-cap? / Whatever the name, a squirt of red can change everything 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Summer's about to end, and with it our delighted roles as food artists. You know, the naked joy each time we paint streaks of red and yellow down the length of a hot dog and every time we squirt spirals on a hamburger patty.

If many of today's cutting-edge chefs design $50 plates with squeeze bottles filled with sauces, reductions and oils, you can bet they started as tots with the one and only American food paint - red tomato ketchup.

As Labor Day arrives, we can tip our hats to the American art of ketchup eating, cooking and designing. If it weren't for the most popular American condiment, we'd probably be stuck in the primal ooze of food seasoning. Along with salt and pepper, ketchup is one of the major flavor components of food.

Yet, ketchup has hidden charms. Explore them and you learn there are hundreds of ways to design with ketchup besides streaking hot dogs.

For a while, ketchup's position as the American condiment was wobbly. A tidal wave of salsa threatened ketchup's 100-year-plus rule as America's top glop. In 1992, Packaged Facts, a food and beverage marketing research group, reported that salsa sales had grown 14 percent from the previous year, to $640 million; ketchup was at a mere $600 million. Salsa may have taken the top spot in dollars earned, but, says Robin Teets, spokesperson for Heinz North America, "by volume, ketchup was always the leader." Salsa, he explains, has different "host foods" {ndash} i.e. not hot dogs. And, salsa was more expensive, so naturally it gained on ketchup in dollar amount." Ketchup wasn't always king.

In the beginning, ketchup wasn't red. It wasn't tomato, in fact. Historians have variously attributed the word itself to British, French, Arabic, Malay, Indonesian and Chinese (Cantonese as well as Amoy dialects) influences, among others. What's clear is that ketchup primarily was a fish-, walnut- or mushroom-based condiment.

The generally accepted myth is that ketchup comes from Chinese origins, especially the Chinese who migrated to Indonesia and Malaysia, where the word "kecap" or "kacap" is still in everyday usage. Any Cantonese-speaking Chinese can rise to the occasion by noting that fan-kae jup, shortened to kae jup, sounds right and means right: "tomato sauce" or "tomato gravy."

History in the making

But Andrew F. Smith, author of "Pure Ketchup, a History of America's National Condiment" (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), questions this argument. He says that the origins of the word come from a confusing, well- mixed cauldron.

The word "ketchup" or some variation of it appeared in British cookery books as early as the 17th century, he writes, largely for something pickled. Sources reveal ketchup as a homemade sauce based on walnuts, fish or mushrooms, each of them boosted by spices and herbs such as cloves, pepper, ginger and mace, as well as garlic, onions, shallots, mustard, horseradish, cayenne and chili peppers. The job of the spices? They "enhanced taste and masked the stench of putrefaction."

Early uses

Ketchup was used as a topping or sauce by itself, or as a finishing element in the making of sauces.

By 1742, ketchup recipes showed up across the Atlantic and were just as popular in the colonies as in mother Britain. Ketchup belonged in the cook's repertory along with the pickles and condiments of the American kitchen. A recipe for tomato ketchup, modeled on those earlier ketchups, was published in 1812. All of the ketchups succeeded for one great reason: They could keep for a long time. Already shelf life was the defining characteristic of American food.

A second great American characteristic also fit with ketchup: It could move. As a highly concentrated, cooked-down sauce, ketchup could be carried anywhere and, when added in a little dash to food, woke it up.

Going commercial

"In Britain and America, ketchup recipes ran wild," Smith says.

Commercial ketchup-making started as a by-product of the tomato canning industry -- as a brown product. In 1869 in Sharpsburg, Pa., Heinz & Noble Co. produced tomato and walnut ketchup for 24 cents per gallon and sold them from whiskey barrels. Later, H.J. Heinz emerged with his own company. He had found a way to purify tomato ketchup and keep it red. With that, he packaged it in a glass bottle. Although H.J. Heinz began as a pickles and horseradish manufacturer, ketchup became one of the company's main products.

By the early 20th century, Heinz was the largest tomato ketchup producer in the world. By the mid-20th century, homemade ketchup recipes virtually disappeared from cookbooks.

That was in America.

In another part of the world, ketchup led something of a parallel life. "Kecap" is part of everyday language in the Malay-speaking world.

However, it means something quite different. In Indonesia, kecap stands for various sauces. Kecap manis means sweetened soy sauce, a thick, syrupy brew of Chinese soy sauce cooked down with many spices, functioning, as it did in its early days in England and America, as a finishing sauce of concentrated flavors.

Exotic ingredients

Kecap manis contains palm sugar, garlic, star anise, galangal root and other spices, says Daniel Sudaryanto, sous chef at Betelnut, a Pan-Asian restaurant in San Francisco. Sudaryanto, 29, remembers cooking down soy sauce at home in Yogjakarta, Indonesia. Kecap manis is the most popular of the kecaps. Like American tomato ketchup, it is rarely homemade these days; rather, it is manufactured. Also like American tomato ketchup, it has become sweet. Then there is kecap asin, Sudaryanto says, meaning salty soy sauce, which is used as a dipping sauce in Indonesian cuisine.

Sauce Americana

American ketchup delivers a shock to Indonesian newcomers. Sudaryanto chuckles when he describes the first time he asked for ketchup in this country and got a red, tomato-y product. "It was different," he says. Another Indonesian immigrant, Fi Li Tjioe, who operates a small coffee stall in a San Francisco corporate building, says she exclaimed, "This is what we call saus tomat!" when she was first served American ketchup. Even in Sulawesi, Indonesia, where she grew up, she says, the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant dispensed red chili sauce next to "saus tomat," or ketchup. She would use both.

Flavor fusion

Alex Ong, Malaysian-born executive chef of Betelnut, says that kecap and ketchup both retain the role of a seasoning in Asian cuisine. Like the original early ketchups of the West, it is the finishing ingredient in many sauces, providing one more facet of flavor. Tomato ketchup is primarily a sweetened, concentrated, tomato flavor called for in everything from sweet-and- sour fish to dishes such as chile crab {ndash} which is what ketchup was originally meant to do.

So the idea of painting with ketchup lives on, but in complex and subtle ways, closer to the way the early ketchups of fish, mushrooms and walnuts were called on to wake up sauces.

Then there's yet another unexpected use -- this one from the July 2003 United Kingdom edition of Cosmopolitan Hair: "If your recently highlighted locks have turned a green tinge from too many pool parties, jump at the nearest BBQ invite and smother your hair in Heinz tomato ketchup for 10 minutes. The PH-balance will bring your hair back to full colour."

That's what we said: Ketchup is the ultimate food paint.

Ketchup factoids

-- In 1896, Scientific American magazine names ketchup "America's Favorite Condiment."

-- In 1927, Heinz markets the first bottles of ketchup, selling for 10 cents apiece.

-- The world's largest ketchup bottle -- 170 feet -- is located in Collinsville, Ill. where it is the town's water tower.

-- Ketchup leaves the glass bottle at 25 miles per hour.

-- Heinz produces 291,000 gallons of ketchup per day, 400 million bottles per year and 16 billion single-serve packages per year..

From Heinz North America

A ketchup time line

Earlier: Ketchups imported into Britain, mostly from "East-India" (now Indonesia)

1727: First known English-language recipe for "English Katchop" published in "E. Smith's Compleat Housewife, or, Accomplished Gentlewoman's Companion." It contained anchovies, shallots, vinegar, wine and spices such as mace, ginger, cloves, peppers, nutmeg, lemon peel and horseradish. "Mushroom liquid" was optional.

1732: First appearance in English of a Southeast Asian ketchup recipe based on kidney beans (as a substitute for soybeans), from Sumatra, settled by the British in 1684.

1742: England's "Compleat Housewife" cookbook is published in North America.

1743: "Kitchup" is declared a kitchen staple in a British housekeeper's guide. Fish, mushroom and walnut emerge as the three main ketchups.

1795: Manuscripts for American cookbooks include walnut and mushroom ketchups, but also tomato ketchup. One of them, from Mrs. Michell, called for love apples to be layered with salt, allspice, mace and whole pepper, then boiled, sieved, cooled and pounded.

1812: First published American tomato ketchup of unstrained tomato pulp with spices -- more like tomato sauce.

1817: Criticism of commercial ketchup voiced by cookbook author Dr. William Kitchiner. His book, "Apicius Redivivus, or, the Cook's Oracle," included 11 ketchup recipes, including two each for mushroom, walnut and tomato ketchups, and one each for cucumber, oyster and cockles and mussels ketchups.

1829: New Englander Lydia Child opines that the best sort of ketchup is made from tomatoes. She uses it in beef soup, fricasseed chicken and fish chowder.

1830: Commercial bottling operations for ketchup begin in Boston, Baltimore and New York. Ketchup is bottled about 10 years later.

1850s: Sugar appears as an ingredient in tomato ketchup recipes.

1855: Anderson Preserve Co. incorporates and sells Boston Market Catsup throughout the United States.

1869: Henry J. Heinz partners with L.C. Noble to form Heinz & Noble in Sharpsburg, Pa., selling fruit and vegetable preserves.

1882: Heinz begins patenting ketchup bottles.

1888: H.J. Heinz Co. forms manufacturing operations in the United States and other countries.

1896: H.J. Heinz has agencies in London, Antwerp, Sydney and Bermuda.

1904: Homemade ketchup takes a dive. Survey shows only one-sixth of respondents ate homemade ketchup.

1940: Ketchup recipes all but disappear from cookbooks.

-- From "Pure Ketchup"

Oseng Oseng

An Indonesian dish that uses "kecap" as Indonesians mean it -- as a type of flavored soy sauce. Kecap manis is the sweetened, reduced soy sauce so beloved of Indonesians. This is a recipe from Daniel Sudaryanto, sous chef at Betelnut. He says Oseng-Oseng means wok-tossed, in other words, stir-fry.

INGREDIENTS:

1 pound mixed seafood, such as cubed, mild fish (like halibut) and peeled whole shrimp

Kosher salt and pepper to taste

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1 magrut leaf (kaffir lime), bruised

1 stalk lemongrass, cut into 1-inch segments, bruised

Juice of 1/2 lime

1/2 teaspoon Asian fish sauce

1 teaspoon sambal oelek (Indonesian hot chili paste)

2 tablespoons coconut cream (skimmed off the top of frozen coconut milk)

2 tablespoons chicken stock

1 tablespoon kecap manis (Indonesian sweet soy)

Sugar to taste

Garnish

Sliced red chiles

Julienned scallion (white part only)

Tender cilantro leaves

INSTRUCTIONS:

Season the seafood with salt and pepper. Heat a frying pan or wok and add the oil.

Add the seafood and brown, but do not cook all the way through. Remove to a serving dish.

In the same pan, saute the onion until soft. Add the ginger, garlic, magrut leaf and lemongrass and saute until fragrant.

Add the lime juice, fish sauce, sambal oelek, coconut cream, chicken stock and kecap manis. Season with salt, pepper and sugar.

Cook until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Return the seafood to the pan and simmer until cooked through. Discard the lemongrass.

Serve garnished with chiles, scallion and cilantro.

Serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as an appetizer

PER APPETIZER SERVING: 165 calories, 22 g protein, 4 g carbohydrate, 7 g fat (2 g saturated), 99 mg cholesterol, 443 mg sodium, 0 fiber.

DEVILED PRAWNS

Created by Executive Chef Alex Ong of Betelnut restaurant. The ketchup combined with other seasonings captures the way Asians and Southeast Asians use this condiment as a finishing ingredient that contributes bright and intense flavors.

INGREDIENTS:

16 gulf prawns (about 1 pound), peeled (leave tail on), deveined

Kosher salt and white pepper to taste

Oil

1/4 cup tomato ketchup, or 1 pint ripe sweet cherry tomatoes

1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger

1 to 2 Thai bird chiles

12 roasted garlic cloves

1 teaspoon cayenne

2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine (Shaoxing wine)

2 tablespoons chicken stock

3 tablespoons oyster sauce

2 tablespoons sriracha sauce

1 tablespoon sugar

15 Thai basil leaves

1 magrut leaf (kaffir lime), finely minced

1 green onion, thinly sliced on the diagonal

2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, sliced

INSTRUCTIONS:

Season the prawns with salt and pepper, then stir-fry them in oil. When they turn pink but are not yet cooked through, add the ketchup, ginger, chiles, garlic and cayenne. Stir to combine.

Add the wine and stock, scraping the bottom of the pan to deglaze. Stir in the oyster and sriracha sauces. Add the sugar and season with salt and pepper. Cook until the liquid is reduced by half.

Stir in the basil, magrut and green onion. Add the butter in small pieces, stirring until incorporated.

Serves 3 or 4 as an appetizer

PER SERVING: 155 calories, 6 g protein, 16 g carbohydrate, 6 g fat (4 g saturated), 62 mg cholesterol, 960 mg sodium, 0 fiber.