Catsup Vs. Ketchup
Okay, so which is the correct spelling for this popular tomato sauce: catsup or ketchup?
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The answer: Both, but ketchup is closer to the original name of the sauce. In the 1600s, the Chinese made a table sauce of pickled fish and spices and called it kôe-chiap or kê-chiap (brine of pickled fish or shellfish). A little different than our tomato sauce of today! In fact, it was a long time before tomatoes were added.
And how did ketchup become one of the most popular condiments in America? It took a journey over centuries!
Most historians believe that in the early 1700s, European explorers visiting what is now Malaysia and Singapore had their first taste of the fish sauce and brought it home with them. The Indonesian-Malay word for it was kecap (pronounced "kay-chap").
In Great Britain, kecap went through a transformation. The British prepared it with mushroom as the primary ingredient instead of seafood. They gave this spiced mushroom sauce its modern spelling of ketchup. British settlers took ketchup with them when they sailed to a new life in the American colonies.
It wasn’t until the early 1800s in the United States that the tomato-based version of ketchup appeared. Cookbooks of the day began including recipes for tomato ketchup. One of them was written by a cousin of President Thomas Jefferson! This is also when sweetness was added to the sauce.
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There was a good reason why ketchup took so long to become a tomato sauce. For some 200 years, people were afraid to eat raw tomatoes. The story got around that several wealthy people had eaten a raw tomato and died. The fruit was nicknamed “poison apple.” But the truth was that these unfortunate tomato-eating souls ate it on a pewter plate high in lead content. Lead is poisonous, and the acid in the tomato leached or picked up the lead. What they really died of was lead poisoning.
Tomato ketchup became very popular in the U.S. right away because of this. It was deemed safer to eat the fruit cooked. In 1837, ketchup was bottled and sold nationally for the first time. In 1876, the Heinz brothers launched their famous tomato ketchup.
And what about the alternative spelling? In the 1690 Dictionary of the Canting Crew, the first English dictionary of slang words, there is an entry for “catchup.” However, most people believe the spelling of “catsup” originated from the author Jonathan Swift (who wrote Gulliver’s Travels). He was quoted in 1730, saying, “And, for our home-bred British cheer, Botargo (fish relish), catsup, and caveer (caviar).” For many decades, catsup was the more common spelling in the U.S., but most bottles these days use the ketchup spelling.
So, please pass the ketchup!
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