Pass the Ketchup, please. The condiment that has an iron grip on American cuisine.

French fries and a burger aren't the same without the tomato-based sauce.

What could be better than an upside down bottle with a right side up label?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

The origin of ketchup goes back to fermented Chinese fish sauce. The tomato base showed up in 1812 in Philadelphia, USA, thanks to a recipe by scientist, James Mease. Before then, ketchup was a generic name for sauces with a variety of ingredients. A high salt content kept the product from spoiling over long periods.

In 1876, a new company, named Heinz, created an original recipe for ketchup and brought it to market. The ingredients consisted of tomatoes, distilled vinegar, brown sugar, salt and various spices. They also introduced the glass bottle and encouraged customers to keep the product on the kitchen table.

The days of starting a new bottle by smacking it on the bottom are long over. The arrival of the inverted squeeze container eliminated having an uncontrolled trajectory overshoot the intended target or the need to for a butter knife inserted into the bottle’s neck to start the flow. For those of us who like to research better methods of accomplishing a task, the skill for mastering the initiation of a freshly-opened bottle no longer applied: tip the bottle into pour position and smack the heel of your hand against the bottle at the point where the number 57 appears in the glass. Worked like a charm.

The custom of using ketchup, I believe, is handed down from generation to generation. My introduction came from my father. I watched him use the thick red sauce—and lots of it— on potatoes, eggs, and meat. I found the tangy stuff useful when my mother served liver. A ketchup sandwich proved to be a good after-school snack when nothing of greater substance was available. I learned that a little horseradish mixed with ketchup gave you a tasty cocktail sauce.

And, yes, there are iconoclasts who use ketchup on hot dogs instead of the traditional yellow mustard. Perhaps, there should be a fine for that.

I love everything about ketchup, except those nasty little squeeze packets thrown into your bag at the hamburger drive-through. Never enough of them. Each one poses its own challenge for opening. By the time you stop and open each one, the food is cold. My recommendation: At the drive-through window, say “no” to the question, “Ketchup?” Keep an extra squeeze bottle in the car. Might be useful as a repellent instead of mace. Or, if a well-dressed Brit in a Rolls Royce lowers a rear window at a stoplight and asks, “Have you any Heinz?” You can help him out with a squeeze or two.

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Howard Feigenbaum is the author several action/adventure/romance trilogies, two books of poetry, a children’s book, and an abbreviated memoir. His motto about life:

“If you can’t laugh, what good is it?”