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The Ancient -- and Surprisingly Divisive! -- Story of Ketchup · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: much for tuning in. This episode might make you hungry,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: It might make you angry. If you hate catch up,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: it might indeed make you angry. Shout out to our
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: super producer, Mr Max Williams. They called me Ben, They
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: called me Ben, and we've got a No, we've got
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: what may well be the first episode of a continuing
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: series here today a saga even perhaps, Uh my question
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  Speaker 1: to you, though, Benn, as well, this episode make me hungry.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: It may indeed may indeed. What's the difference between hungry
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: and hang gry? Noll? I think hungry. It is just
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: like a cutesie stylized way of texting someone that you're
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: you're hungry. Ah, yes, plaintively so I imagine. Indeed it's
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  Speaker 1: you know, it's no secret, folks, we love food on
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History. Uh, some of some of mine. I think
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: some of all of our favorite episodes are about weird
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: food history. And you know, if you think are on
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: air banter about food is a lot, maybe you should
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  Speaker 1: hear us when the mics aren't rolling. We're just hanging
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  Speaker 1: out getting lunch or something. This is a continuing series
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  Speaker 1: on the history of condiments because uh, honestly, we read
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  Speaker 1: a lot about it, way too much already outside of work.
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  Speaker 1: We couldn't think of a better way to start than
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  Speaker 1: with the at times controversial protagonists of all things American condiments.
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  Speaker 1: Catch Up. Do you have catch up in your house? No? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I do. Um. You know, it's actually I like to
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  Speaker 1: put it on hot dogs, which I know Chicago and
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  Speaker 1: UH would frown upon. Um. I like a good mix
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  Speaker 1: of yellow mustard and ketchup on a on a dog.
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  Speaker 1: I like catch up as a dipper for French fries.
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  Speaker 1: I also really like it as a an ingredient for
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  Speaker 1: barbecue sauce. You guys cool. If I tell a catch
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  Speaker 1: up story real quick, please do so. A couple of
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  Speaker 1: years ago, you know, we're all Me and my buddies
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  Speaker 1: were all big Atlanta baseball fans, and we were up
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  Speaker 1: at Wrigley Field in Chicago to see, you know, Atlanta
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  Speaker 1: play the Cubs, and it was really you know, fun,
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  Speaker 1: exciting and stuff. But one day we're at Millennium Park,
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  Speaker 1: you know, downtown Chicago. The Bean. Yeah, yeah, we're at
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  Speaker 1: the Bean and we're walking around and you know, of
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  Speaker 1: course we got some Chicago dogs. And I remember I
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  Speaker 1: was there with my buddy Phil, who hates tomatoes but
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  Speaker 1: for some reason like ketchup, and he's sitting there, not
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  Speaker 1: sitting there, standing there with a vendor argument the vendor
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  Speaker 1: like trying to get catch up. He's like, give me
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  Speaker 1: some goddamn ketchup and the and the vendors like ketchup
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  Speaker 1: is disgusting, whole tomatoes on your hot dog instead. I
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  Speaker 1: just want to point that out because it's kind of
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  Speaker 1: a It's interesting I get catch up more than just tomatoes.
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  Speaker 1: That's stuff today. It's very divisive in Chicago, like their
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  Speaker 1: anti ketchup on hot dogs. As you may well know,
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  Speaker 1: a Chicago dog is mustard is the exclusive condiment in
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  Speaker 1: addition to sports peppers, um a relish of some sort
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  Speaker 1: of very like Neon green relish, a poppy seed bun,
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  Speaker 1: slice of tomato, and a whole pickle, which is the
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  Speaker 1: only part that I can't abide. But other than that,
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  Speaker 1: I love a Chicago dog and I really do think
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  Speaker 1: it's the best of dog. It's gotta be all beef
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  Speaker 1: as well. That's the thing. I'm also interested in the
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  Speaker 1: lamb icelandic hot dogs. Maybe that's an episode for another
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  Speaker 1: day hot Dog. Yeah, I like talking about Iceland. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: there we go. And the thing, you know, to your point,
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  Speaker 1: max Um, you know what we'll find two is that
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  Speaker 1: the ketchup and tomatoes couldn't be much more extricable. You
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  Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like ketchup is two tomatoes what
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  Speaker 1: grape flavoring is to grape. I really did. You don't
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  Speaker 1: really get much tomato flavor from ketchup at all. It's
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  Speaker 1: just kind of its own thing, and there are a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people who prefer the fresh tomato approach to
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  Speaker 1: catch up, just like there are a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: who hate grape flavored stuff but love actual grapes. I've
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  Speaker 1: got to tell you, doing research for this episode was
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  Speaker 1: awesome because it finally allowed me to corral a bunch
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  Speaker 1: of unrelated, irrelevant facts. Today, ketchup is no fooling and
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  Speaker 1: around a little less than ninety seven percent of homes
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  Speaker 1: throughout the United States as and that number is held
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  Speaker 1: steady for quite a while. It's thrown on everything. A
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  Speaker 1: lot of people don't know this, but secret of Thai
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  Speaker 1: restaurants often is that ketchup is used as an ingredient,
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  Speaker 1: and you might not know it if you haven't seen
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  Speaker 1: how the pad tie gets made. Of course, a lot
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  Speaker 1: of people don't like ketchup associated with pad tie, but
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  Speaker 1: people are sensitive about condiments. Some folks hate ketchup. Some
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  Speaker 1: folks say, you know, ketchup as a child's condiment, right,
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  Speaker 1: because it's so sweet. Some love it, but it is
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  Speaker 1: often the first condiment young kids in the US get
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  Speaker 1: introduced to. And a lot of people, you know, you
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  Speaker 1: think of ketchup, you think, okay, how old can it be?
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  Speaker 1: But today we are going to explore the real story
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  Speaker 1: of ketchup, the real origin story. Modern ketchup wasn't invented
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  Speaker 1: until the early eighteen hundreds, but it starts way, way, way,
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  Speaker 1: way before the world knew about tomatoes. Well, I'm hoping
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  Speaker 1: to that will shed some light on the different spellings
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  Speaker 1: of the condiment catchup stylized as you know, K A
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  Speaker 1: T C H G P I get Maybe I'm getting
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  Speaker 1: that wrong, versus cat soup K C A T S
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  Speaker 1: U P. Yes, yes, okay, all right, yes, you're art
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  Speaker 1: is something here, so okay, if we want to talk
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  Speaker 1: about where ketchup comes from, we gotta just forget tomatoes,
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  Speaker 1: will introduce them in a second. Tomatoes didn't get across
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  Speaker 1: the oceans from South America until the fifteen hundreds or so,
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  Speaker 1: which is why a lot of you know, you so,
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  Speaker 1: a lot of people associated Italian cuisine with tomatoes, right,
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  Speaker 1: but that wasn't a thing in the fourteen hundreds. And
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  Speaker 1: even after Europeans knew about tomatoes, which they sometimes called
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  Speaker 1: love apples, they wouldn't mess with them because they yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: true story. They they thought tomatoes were poisonous. The roots
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  Speaker 1: of ketchup, which have nothing to do with tomatoes, start
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  Speaker 1: all the way back in southern China, far back as
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  Speaker 1: three d b C. In fact, where they were already
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  Speaker 1: experimenting with flavor in some very interesting way is typically
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  Speaker 1: doing ferments. You know, we know, uh, there are certainly
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  Speaker 1: there's certainly a kind of modern hipster sort of scene
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  Speaker 1: for fermented foods, everything from kim she too, pickled vegetables
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  Speaker 1: to whatever it might be. And if you've looked into
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  Speaker 1: the history of fermenting, it really is absolutely ancient. Um So,
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  Speaker 1: there were all of these different fermented pastes that were
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  Speaker 1: being developed, let's just say, back as far as three
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  Speaker 1: B c e using things like awful you know, meat
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  Speaker 1: by products that maybe weren't necessarily tasty on their own.
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  Speaker 1: But surely there's something we can do with these if
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  Speaker 1: we just you know, bury them in the dirt and
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  Speaker 1: leave them for you know, six months, and then see
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  Speaker 1: what happens. There was a lot of sea there's a
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  Speaker 1: lot of see what happens mentality, things like fish in trails,
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  Speaker 1: and of course staple crops like soybeans. Yeah, yeah, this uh,
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  Speaker 1: this stuff is fish sauce. Fish sauce is hugely popular
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  Speaker 1: throughout the Pacific, right And I don't know about you, guys.
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  Speaker 1: I love a good fish sauce as well. I've got
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  Speaker 1: some of my own favorites. But this fish sauce was
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  Speaker 1: called cootsy up or get up, which I know sounds
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  Speaker 1: a little like black lodge backwards speech, but that's spelled
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  Speaker 1: ge dash th h c u p or koe dash
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  Speaker 1: h e u p. And this comes from people who
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  Speaker 1: spoke the Southern Men dialect. They loved this stuff because
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  Speaker 1: you could store it on long ocean voyages. But this
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  Speaker 1: wasn't the only kind of fermented fish stuff. There's a
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  Speaker 1: lot of parallel thinking in the world of food, especially
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  Speaker 1: when people have access to the same ingredients. So other places,
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  Speaker 1: other communities and civilizations that had maritime trade, they also
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  Speaker 1: made fermented fish things, paste and sauces. Garum was a
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  Speaker 1: fish sauce in the ancient Mediterranean. It was like the
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  Speaker 1: fish flavored ketchup of the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks.
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  Speaker 1: But Europeans, the ones who were, you know, making contact
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  Speaker 1: with the Pacific, they didn't really know about this when
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  Speaker 1: they found the Chinese sauce. In fact, Europeans probably after
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  Speaker 1: a while, forgot it was from China at all, because
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  Speaker 1: it went from let's see, you went from southern China
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  Speaker 1: to Indonesia and the Philippines, and that's where British traders
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  Speaker 1: found it in the seventeen hundreds and it had a
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  Speaker 1: nice bite. It lasted again for long arduous sea voyages.
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  Speaker 1: Why why wouldn't you love it? So they took samples
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  Speaker 1: home and they promptly began to tinker with the recipe.
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  Speaker 1: We're getting into touchy subject here and ald because we're
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  Speaker 1: talking about traditional British cuisine, which isn't for everybody. But
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  Speaker 1: I'm just saying I can't blame them for getting excited
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  Speaker 1: about something with you know, a little more flavor to it. Fish. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I want to point out really quickly a question that
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  Speaker 1: I had that maybe folks out there might have. Is
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  Speaker 1: garum related to the Malaysian Indonesian you know, Indian word
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  Speaker 1: garam like garam masala, which is a spice blend. Um.
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  Speaker 1: Garam is apparently the word from that part of the
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  Speaker 1: country for salt um. So that spice blend, you know,
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  Speaker 1: is is kind of meant to impart a saltiness to it.
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  Speaker 1: And obviously fish has that as well. But a book
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  Speaker 1: called The Fisheries of the Oriental Region claims that this
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  Speaker 1: is just kind of more of a strange coincidence rather
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  Speaker 1: than an etymological shared root. Nice clearing it up. We're
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  Speaker 1: going to clear up a lot of stuff, you know.
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  Speaker 1: So the British folks loved this because they thought it
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  Speaker 1: was a new interesting thing to add to the flavor
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  Speaker 1: profile of their foods. Still no tomatoes though, because remember
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  Speaker 1: a lot of people thought these were absolutely poisonous. The
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  Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds are a weird golden age for catch up.
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  Speaker 1: They called it spiced sauce and uh. They applied this
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  Speaker 1: fermentation process to every kind of ingredient they could get
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  Speaker 1: their hands on. If you look back at old school cookbooks,
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  Speaker 1: you'll see people were making catch up out oysters, mushrooms, muscles, walnuts,
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  Speaker 1: celery fruits like peach, ketchup, plum and ketchup, which doesn't
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  Speaker 1: seem that weird. I just don't know if it's for
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  Speaker 1: me necessarily, And they would The way they would do
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  Speaker 1: it is they would boil this stuff down until it
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  Speaker 1: was kind of syrupy, and they would put they would
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  Speaker 1: salt it, and they would just leave it alone for
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  Speaker 1: a long period of time and then you got kind
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  Speaker 1: of what you've got what National Geographic describes as a
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  Speaker 1: flavor bomb in a great article by Jasmine Wiggins. Well,
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  Speaker 1: one of the most important qualities of ketchup today is
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  Speaker 1: that it is what is considered shelf stable. So you'll
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  Speaker 1: notice that, like you know, at a lot of restaurants
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  Speaker 1: and diners, the ketchup just sits out on the table
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  Speaker 1: and they'll just refill these bottles and maybe they store
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  Speaker 1: them in in refrigeration overnight. I don't know, but it
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  Speaker 1: can sit out, you know, all day um without worry
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  Speaker 1: about collecting bacteria or whatever. As long as it's air tight.
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  Speaker 1: And that's because of this this process using the salt
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  Speaker 1: essentially as a preservative. And as as we look at
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  Speaker 1: this period of time, fellow ridiculous historians, you might guess
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  Speaker 1: already if you just looked at this stuff in a
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  Speaker 1: little ramikin, it is way different from the Hinds or
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  Speaker 1: Hunts ketchup. You find shelf stable and preserved, like you said,
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  Speaker 1: at grocery stores today. One recipe from seventeen thirty six said,
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  Speaker 1: here's how you make ketchup. Swear to god this is true.
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  Speaker 1: He said, take two quarts of really strong, stale beer,
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  Speaker 1: and how off a pound of anchovies and boil it
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  Speaker 1: and then leave it alone. I don't know if I
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  Speaker 1: want that on a hot dog. I don't know either.
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  Speaker 1: But you know what that does sound a little bit
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  Speaker 1: more like is something akin to like worcestersh sauce, you know,
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  Speaker 1: which you obviously can use in different ways. You can
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  Speaker 1: use as an ingredient, or you can, you know, put
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  Speaker 1: it on fries like malt vinegar for example. Yeah it's great,
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  Speaker 1: but I mean we're getting into this area where there
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  Speaker 1: was a sort of version of this that would have
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  Speaker 1: been more regional, like every kind of you know area,
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  Speaker 1: maybe have their own version of this stuff depending on
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  Speaker 1: the the ingredients that were available to them. Yeah, exactly,
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  Speaker 1: And that's that's what people had to do. Remember, there
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  Speaker 1: weren't really global supply chains for fresh food or ingredients.
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  Speaker 1: The only way you're eating fresh fish is if you
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  Speaker 1: live near a place where you can get fresh fish.
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  Speaker 1: So I have to pause and just ask a question
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  Speaker 1: right now, and just let's go through a name some
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  Speaker 1: of those different catch non tomato ketchup varieties and tell me,
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  Speaker 1: let's tell each other together if you would try them?
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: All right? Number one lemon catch up? Yes or no?
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I feel like it could go with some stuff. I
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: need more information. I lately have been I lately have
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: been using a lot of lemon, Like I'll cook rice
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  Speaker 1: and use lemon zests and like squeeze of a lemon
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  Speaker 1: in there. And I really like the brightness that a
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: lemon can add to a to a recipe. But do
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  Speaker 1: I want a lemon sauce that sounds more like something
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  Speaker 1: you put on a custard or you know, a cake,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: rather than something you put with something savory, Because lemon
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: can be a very strong flavor. So even when I
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: put it in the rice. A whole giant pot of
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  Speaker 1: rice will maybe only get the zest of half a
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: lemon and the juice of half a lemon. So you know,
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  Speaker 1: I would assume that that that lemon catch up, by
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  Speaker 1: its very nature of what the condiment kind of is,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: would be very concentrated and probably a little much. Yeah,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I would. I would, um, I use limon all the time,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: lemons and lines when I'm cooking stuff, just for that
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  Speaker 1: that bright central note. But I also go a little
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: slow with it. I've done homemade preserved lemons. They've got
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: a kick as well for lemon catch up. I would
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: think maybe seafood would go nice with like a seafood dish,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: but you probably wanna treat it like concentrated coffee and
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: somehow dilute it. All right, we'll not catch up? What
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: do we think? You know? It's interesting this also makes
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: me think of like different kinds of bidders that you
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: put in cocktails. So there is like walnut bidders, you know,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: and there's like lavender bidders and different ones like that.
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  Speaker 1: And that's also a very strong, concentrated kind of additive
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: that you'd really just want to put a couple of
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: drops of in your in your cocktail. I do like
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the flavor of walnut, and I like like walnut dressing,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: you know, Thanksgiving or things that it adds a real
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: UMMMI flavor, which leads me to Mushroom ketchup is one
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: that I would definitely be down. I've had it. It's
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: pretty good. I had it. I couldn't imagine that it
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be. Yeah, and then, of course, as any my
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: collogists can assure you people who study funus, um, it
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: depends on the type of mushroom, right, Uh, yeah, oyster catchup,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: I would try it. I don't know if be a
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: go to. I've had banana ketchup before. I found it
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: pretty sweet. But that's what people were doing. They were
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: making it with whatever they had available and trusted already
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: as a food source. Here's an oyster catchup recipe that
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: uh that actually, let's let's give like three historic things.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: The oyster ketchup recipe seems like pretty inefficient. Yeah. This
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  Speaker 1: recipe that you're referencing, bend from the seventeen hundreds called
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: for one hundred oysters say, it seems like overkill. It
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: seems like you can accomplish it with fewer than a hundred.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: But who am I to say, mixed with only three
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: pints of white wine, lemon peels, um with mace and clothes,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: which I'm not crazy about, just in general that this
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: flavors not my bag. Um, I'm gonna say, how much
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: are you using this though? I mean a hundred oysters
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna have this for a while. It's not
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: like you're gonna be making this like once a week.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: So oysters are just such a strong flavor. I just
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: don't understand why you would need so many. Wow, Okay,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: I mean you know that is how you make concentrate.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Usually it's with like a ton of the stuff and
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: then you're you're boiling it down to its essence, you know,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: and making like this literal kind of tincture that that
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: just within it is contained the power of two hundred oysters. Ah, yes,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: that is a superpower of an obscure comic book rope
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: and Max Williams that's his real dame of your heard
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: it here first, folks, there was commemorative catchup. The Prince
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: of Wales ketchup was made from elderberries and anchovies. Jane
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Austin was down with ketchup. In addition to writing Pride
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: and Prejudice, she liked to talk about how cool mushroom
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: ketchup was. But again, this stuff was more. It was
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: thinner than the ketchup you c today. It was dark,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and it was often added into like soups and sauces.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: So to our point about concentration of flavor, this was
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: diluted in other things more like a hot sauce. Maybe
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: you might dash into something, you know, rather than dip
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: almost yeah, yeah, yeah, And I don't know where it
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: is in terms of concentration compared to say, sesame oil,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: which I think is amazing and I probably used too
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: much of it, but my girlfriend is disgusted by the
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: smell of sesame oil. Really, I get it for you guys. Yeah, well,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: it is strong and it's it's I wouldn't necessarily use
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: it as liberally as you might olive oil. You know,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: it's more of flavoring than like an oil to cook with. Yeah.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: I so maybe I've gone overboard within the past. But
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: I got a really great, um little kit from Momofuku
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: that included a little bottle of toasted sesame oil their
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: restaurant grade. Soy sauce and um a restaurant what they
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: call restaurant grade rice wine, vinegar, and then a bunch
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: of their chili crisp condiments that are just fantastic. And
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: the toasted sesame oil, you know, the bottles are they
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: have those little little daub little daver kind of thing,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: so it really just dispenses in drops rather than like
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: filling a pan with it to like fry something. That's
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the way to do it. To illustrate the picture for
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: for you guys, I I know I sent you my
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: uh my survivalist level collection of noodles. I have too much,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: but I also have like a little gas can basically
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: of sesame oil. And it's not the first one I've
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: gone through. But you can make sess me catchup or
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: sess me flavored catchup, which I've done and it slaps.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: I have no regrets. But now I think it's time
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: to introduce the star of our show. This guy has
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: been waiting for the right moment to stroll onto the stage,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: and that moment has arrived. Let's hear it for today's protagonist.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: You might know it, you might love it, you might
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: hate it. Ridiculous historians, Today's story the tomato Jersey Tomato
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Man and idol Hope Potato on a New York Central train.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: They no sooner left the station when they started conversation.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: The Jersey tomato and the idle Hope Potato had no
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: reason to complain. Going west, they got to kiss and
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: through the fields of golden grain. That Jersey blood and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: country smile put stars in those hid who eyes, and
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: the little coach made every mile seemed like it was paradise.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: The wheels were ago, and then the whistle was blown
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: to the tune of Love's refrain. Tomato married the potato.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: They have a tom tato with a little too to trade.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: This is yeah, this is where he used to Yeah.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I used to hate tomatoes
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: with a passion, and my mom loved them and would
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: just eat them by the slice, you know, just fresh, yeah,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: little salt and pepper maybe, But once presented me with
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: it at the dinner table with a plate of sliced tomatoes,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: wouldn't let me leave until I'd eaten one. And I did,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: and then I also proceeded to vomit all over the table.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Oh jeez, you never tried that again. But now I
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: love them. I still won't really eat them on their own.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: I need them to be salted and seasoned and on
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: a sandwich or you know, stewed or whatever it might be.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: But I'm not nearly as averse to them as I
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: once was. That sense memory can be tough. And also
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: catch up catchup that was very pepper heavy, was a
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: common favorite during the Civil War, and even it's catch
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: up at such a weird history. So the tomato, though,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: the tomato is to catch up today, what like it's
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: what electric guitars are to rock music. You can have
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: catch up without tomatoes, just like you can have rock
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: music without electric guitar, obviously, but for a lot of
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: people these seem like fundamental ingredients to their creation. I
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: think that's a fair analogy. And we mentioned tomatoes were
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: considered poisonous by Europeans for a long time. Historians suspect
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: that may have something to do with the acidity of
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: a tomato. It was messing with the lead pewter plates,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: and so you would you would see, uh, this lead,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: of course gives rise to lead poisoning, but you would
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: see the tomato touching of plates and it might mess
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: with the appear and so honored people might get sick,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: so they avoided it until the first known tomato catchup
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: recipe appears. It's eighteen twelve. There's a scientist in horticultural listening,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: James Mease. He calls tomatoes love avils. Please list don't
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: touch me tomato, please don't touched the domainto touch me,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: y Amy puck potato. Don't goodness sake, don't touch me tomato.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: And he put booze in his null that's right. He
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: puts meato pulp and like a secret spice blend and
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: a bit of brandy, which imagine would ultimately go on
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: to be replaced with vinegar, which this recipe did not have,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: nor did it have sugar. But he was ahead of
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the curve because he first mentioned this idea of way
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: back in eighteen o four, before he even popularized the recipe. Yeah,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and the brandy part might be a little bit shocking today,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: but there was a precedent because people have been you know,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: like in those earlier recipes we named pre tomato ketchup,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: people were putting white whack plan in there and stuff.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Shout out to Tim and Eric. But I you know,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I imagine there are still simmering this down. Uh, so
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the alcohol content would would be cooked out right, It
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: was more for the flavor and the preservative quality. Great point,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: and I like that. You also point out that he
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: mentions the idea first in eighteen o four. This is
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: the reason food historians like Andrew F. Smith, who wrote
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: a book called Pure Ketchup, a History of America's National
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Condiment with recipes. This is the reason Smith says Mice
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: probably saw French creole refugees from the Haitian Revolution making
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: something like this sauce. He got the idea from somewhere, right,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: And if you just based on you know what, what
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: you had presented as that a original recipe, well, it
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: seems like this would be something almost closer to a
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: spicy like a Marian era, a spicy tomato sauce, because
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it didn't have that stuff you're mentioning, vinegar. Vinegar is
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: the next key ingredient. Before vinegar was added in the mix,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: it was really difficult to preserve tomato based sauces. They decompose,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: they break down too quickly. Even now, if you take
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: a fresh tomato and you don't do any weird magic
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: to it, Uh, that tomato is gonna rot pretty soon, right,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: I mean you've seen it. Anybody who's bought fresh tomatoes.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: You put them somewhere and then you're like the countdown begins. Yeah,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: even if it's just like in one little spot, it
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: starts to get soft, you know, And and the frugal
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: gourmet is among us. Surely have encountered a tomato that
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: was just experiencing a little bit of rot and maybe
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: sliced off that side and use the intact parts. I'm
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: not ashamed. Yeah, but they are, you know, they're already
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: kind of saw. Then it's the kind of thing that
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: when you're in the grocery store, when you squeezing tomatoes,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: you want to know that it's not too soft, because
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: the software is when you get it. I mean, it
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: is interesting how the when we talk about a fruit
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: being ripe, that is also a term we used to
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: describe a corpse that is rotting and beginning to stink.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: And the closer you get to peak ripeness is also
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: the closer you get to the beginning of rottenness. Yes, yes,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: well put you can of course preserve tomatoes other ways
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: people can can tomatoes, but you can also preserve them
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: by making Ketchup. So until the preservation in the vinegar
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: really hits. There's a problem with Ketchup. You can't trust
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Ketchup for at least a lot of us consumers say
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: both the pro and the amateur ketchup makers were struggling
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: to make sure you can stelete the stuff over time.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: This meant that they were all kind two sketchy preservatives
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: that were put into it to make up for the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: fact that sometimes they were using not the best tomatoes. Right,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: you start with bad ingredients. You can get a bad dish.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Sodium bends away, coal tar, that's I know. Uh, And
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: so a lot of people were distrustful of this. People
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: had bought bad ketchup bottles before. So the Hinz company
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: takes the next step around eighteen seventy six. They are
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: the ones who make a formula that has tomatoes, brown sugar, salt.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Like we said an earlier example of mixed tape of
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: various spices and distilled vinegar. No, this is also the
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: company that introduces glass bottles. What a coup because now
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: you know, you're like you're at the grocer or whatever
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: you're buying catchup and you want to go for the
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: stuff that you can see before you buy it, so
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: it's no longer caveat and tour. They also call that
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: cats up. Going to your original question earlier, M, Yeah,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: it really does just become kind of a branding play
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: to a certain degree. And by the way, Hines another example,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: UM similar to three M where they're filling a need
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: for a thing that is now it has it's popular,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: or the idea of it is popular, or the need
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: for it is popular, but no one's cracked the code
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: on it yet, and then they were essentially first to
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: market with the most recognizable and successful version of a thing.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: And therefore also like Henry Hines, who's the founder of Hines,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: great grandfather something like that of of Teresa Hines carry
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: John Carey's wife, so an absolute legacy, um, you know,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: American family, um with massive, massive wealth. Yeah, no kidding, right,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: And here's the thing they originally had called this stuff catsup.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Hines had What is the difference between cats up with
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: a C and catch up with a K. Well, they're
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: just different terms referring to the same condiment. Everybody, I
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: think knows that at this point. But it's more complicated
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: because there have been a lot of names referring to
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: this stuff over the years. Quick list to see if
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: any of these give everybody a chuckle uh warning they
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: get kind of susian. Here there's cat chop corn chop,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: get zip cat soup, which sounds gross, catch shoop cot
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: pock cuts, puck cutch puck, and more. That's just a
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: list of a few. It's like a Willie Wonka song.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: After a certain point, sure is um and again it's
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: sort of like a word that was already kind of
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: in the zeitgeist. Then you just kind of have to
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: create your own style on and the spelling, sort of
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: like sello tape versus Scotch tape or whatever, you know,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: combining allaphane with tape and changing the letter. If you
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: get to it early enough, you can create a branding
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: that then becomes the stand in for like every other
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: version of the thing, exactly exactly, the catch up by
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: any other name, like a rose by any other name
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: would still taste is sweet. Hines did not start with
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: just one recipe. He had several let's call him drawing
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: board attempts. One of the first recipes had all spice clothes.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: I'm with you, guys, I'm not a big clothes fan, Uh, cayenne, pepper, mace,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: and cinnamon. But then he did a different approach just
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: for comparison or contrast, I should say, uh, there's another
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: recipe that at pepper, ginger, mustard, seeds, celery, salt, horseradish,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: and brown sugar. So he was all over the place.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: You know, you gotta try a bunch of different things,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: just like our pal from the story about Scotch tape.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: But there is something always mystified me as a kid,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: and I suspect him not alone in this Hines fifty
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: seven catch up doesn't mean there are fifty seven different
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: types of ketchup or more. Does it mean it's the
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: fifty seven product that old Henry J. Hines made. No,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: by the time they started putting fifty seven on the bottles,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: they already had more than sixty different things that were
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: making the number fifty seven happens. Because all right, here's
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the idea of the story. It's or so right. Before then,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: he is riding a train in New York City and
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: he sees this advertisement for a shoe store that says,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: we have twenty wanton styles of shoes, and he thinks, oh,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: that's cool. Specificity. So again according to the lore uh,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and you can find this on the Hines website too,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: he just sort of picked the numbers five and seven
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: because they were he and his spouse's favorite numbers. They
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: like the sound of them. And he said he would
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: later say, I did this because quote the psychological influence
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: of that figure and it's enduring significance to people of
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: all ages. So is he like a numerologist at this point?
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I think he was just reading the tea leaves of
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: of of commerce. Uh. In many ways, he was just
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: a really smart kind of brander and and uh, you know,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: I think having that number it is interesting. It sort
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: of reminds me of Basket Robbins and their thirty one flavors.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: And with that though, it makes a little more sense
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: because it was a flavor for every day of the month. Yeah. Yeah, no,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: that way makes way more sense. That's based on something
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: other than you know what number. I like five? Oh,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: I like the number seven. I think we're done here.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: That's kind of what happens. So this is also seven
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: is a cool looking number, that's is five. Yeah, and
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: they do style it pretty nicely with the font, Like
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: the seven is very sharply drawn. You know, it really
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: does have like a very striking look to it, and
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's just like a striking thing fifty seven.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: It's just it's got it's got power to it. If
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: you ask me, there's a lot of power and specificity.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: That's why I love there's a lot of Asian food.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: I love where there are numbers in in the name
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: of the food. I'm a sucker for that because it
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: sounds almost more scientific, you know, it sounds established distinguished
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: as the word I'm looking for, like a Chinese five
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: spice for example, you know, yeah, or like three cup
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: chicken another great idea, but that's because you use roughly
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: a cup of a different three different ingredients. But this
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: is not Heinz's biggest breakthrough. That it's a marketing breakthrough,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: to be sure, But one of his big breakthroughs was
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: not using crap tomatoes. These are riper tomatoes because they
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: add more plentiful natural pecton. This helped with the quality
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: and the preservation. But although it seems obvious now, people
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about it at this time. And then
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: as a result of this, over the years, catch up
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: becomes more and more popular throughout the US and Europe.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: By h five Highs alone has sold five million bottles
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: of ketchup, and so many other people get into the mix,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and they're trying to differentiate themselves, which is why you
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: have all those other silly not quite catch up names
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: in history in the record. And around this time to
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: while all this has happening, we see a sea change,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: or we see a condiments shift. It becomes easier and
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: easier to buy ketchup that doesn't seem poisonous or taste terrible,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: and so people stopped making it at home. People started saying, hey,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: the homemade catchup I make just doesn't doesn't taste right,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: it's not as good. So then as a as now, honestly,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: people have decided, if you can buy shelf stable ketchup,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: why would you go to all the problems of making it.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: As a result, US folks purchase about, what is it,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: ten billion ounces of ketchup every year. That's about three
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: bottles per person. Yeah, that's true. It reminds me of
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: like on Great British Baking Show when they're like, we
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: want you to make a digestive biscuits and everyone's like,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: basically a digestive biscuit is sort of the British equivalent
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: of like a Graham cracker kind of. But usually the
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: responses I've never made that before because no one would
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: ever make that, because it's much cheaper just to buy
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: the branded ones from the store, and they're better than
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: the ones I would make, and it's a pain in
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: the butt. So it really became you know, yeah, if
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: you give people a choice that's affordable and higher quality
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: or at least better tasting, because it's not like you
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: know exactly what's in it, especially when it comes to
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: that secret packet of herbs and spices, then they're going
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: to choose that most every time. Yeah, exactly. It goes
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: into convenient and consistency. And this is why now it's impossible.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: It's virtually impossible to imagine catch Up being anything other
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: than bright red and tomatoy, despite the history we all know.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: And I would say, it's almost weird not to see
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: ketchup in someone's house. And there are some restaurants where
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't expect to find it, right, but most restaurants
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: have some version. You know, you might go to a
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: really really fancy steakhouse that looks down on you for
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: having ketchup with the steak. People are particular about that well,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: like Donald Trump, for example, is infamous for liking his
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: steaks well done, which is a travesty to any you know,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: steak house proprietor you know of note, and also with ketchup,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: there's jokes been made in plenty of TV shows and
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: movies where you got some person, you know, fish out
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: of water kind of story going to a fancy restaurant
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: and requesting ketchup to it's the maitre d or waiter
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: you know, gasps and clutches their pearls exactly exactly, or
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: very fancy Japanese steakhouses where you can only order you know,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: one or two particularly cuts of steak and it is
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: only served with a dab of mustard. Otherwise you're a philistine.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: I think you know, Noel Max, I think it's time
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: for us to get a little bit into the science.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: So we've established that ketchup has these the roots of ketchup,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: the predecessor of these ancient origins. In the Netherlands, there's
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: a sauce called ket yap k e t j a p.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: It's an Indonesian soy sauce, but when you pronounce the
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: name is very similar to catch up. And uh, if
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: you look at how it's made now, you'll see it
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: varies per brand and type, but in general they do
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: some of the same stuff. They wash tomatoes, they ground
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: them up to a fine consistency, and while they're doing
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: this they remove some of the water. Water is an
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: enemy of ketchup, and sadly, like tomato is water. Yeah.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: It's so interesting too, because I mean I made the
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: authentic comment at the top of the show that to me,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: ketchup doesn't taste like a tomato at all. It's sort
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: of like, you know, grape flavoring, not tasting like a grape.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: But there are tons of fresh tomatoes in a bottle
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: of of Hinds tomato ketchup, but it just kind of
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: becomes its own thing. But to that point, a hundred
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: and forty eight grams of tomatoes are used to make
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: just a hundred grams of the products. Yeah, yeah, maybe
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: that kind of answers our oyster question too. I mean
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: you yeah, yeah, you might. Uh well, the oyster ratio
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: was was a bit egregious. Yeah, so not at augh. Okay,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: all right, well, old Max Oyster Williams is coming through
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: uh to maintain quality. We're just gonna We're gonna get
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: you an oyster subscription for Christmas Man. So you might
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: think catch up is a good way to use old
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: or low quality tomatoes, but it looks like that's not
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: the case here. If you want tomatoes for ketchup, you
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: want to harvest them in their prime and you want
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: to get them from harvest to production in a really
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: short amount of time. So big tomato ketchup brands will
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: often have contracts with tomato growers and say like, okay,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: every season, every tomato season, you give us x amount
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: of your crop or maybe even all of it. And
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: farmers will typically say yes to that if they can
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: get good terms because they guarantee someone will buy the tomatoes.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: So if you look at the main two ingredients, we
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: nailed them we as society. It took a second. But
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the other two main ingredients vinegar sugar. You need these
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: to preserve the catchup. It's not just about the taste.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: You're making sure the tomato bit doesn't spoil. And it
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: gets and will get into the science a little bit
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: about water activity. So water activity is a thing that
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: you need to know to understand how food spoils. So
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: low water activity means it's tougher for micro organisms to
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: contaminate and consume food. Well, just just think about like
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: standing water. For example, you know you're gonna get mosquitoes,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: it's gonna start to smell if it's just sitting there.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: So essentially, you know, water in a sealed environment is
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: the equivalent of standing water. You know, um, it's it's
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: obviously sealed, but it is going to make it more
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: prone to growth of of microorganisms and bacteria and molds
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: and things like that that are going to you know,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: spoil the food. And the lower the water content, the
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: less likely um it will spoil in that way. So
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: like a low water activity, something close to zero means
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: there's not much available water. Higher value closer to one
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: means there's a lot. So when you're looking at pathogenic
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: micro organisms, the stuff that makes you feel poorly, stuff
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: that makes you sick, then we see that those little
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: buggers need a high water activity. And the water activity
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: of a fresh tomato is very close to one because
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: it contains so much water, but catchup has a water
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: activity closer to point nine three. Thanks to that sugar,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: and thanks to that salt, this is still high enough
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: for a lot of micro organisms to grow. If you
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: put enough salt and sugar into these things to stop
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: all the growth, that catch up woulden taste very good.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: So they he started like think of it. Think of
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: these preservatives not as a wall stopping all microorganisms. Think
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: of them as speed bumps that get higher hurdles that
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: the microorganism has to cross to grow. The next hurdle
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: is the pH value. Low pH value. Means of food
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: is acidic. Tomatoes by themselves acidic. Everybody knows. That's why.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: I for're making a tomato sauce and you want to
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: reduce the acidity, you just pop a carrot in there
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: while you're cooking it and take the carrot out bai leaf.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Yes way, yes way. Yeah, it's very interesting. So with
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: that being said, um, why isn't there like an acidic
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: super vinegary kick when you, you you know, squirt some ketchup
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: on a fry. You know what? It's because of that sugar,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: the oysters and the oysters max and the oysters. The
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: sweetness of the sugar helps mitigate or hide the acidity
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: of the vinegar. Nowadays, Honestly, a lot of ketchup manufacturers
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: will skip part of the process, so they'll have their
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: tomato harvesters take care of an initial step and they'll
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: just buy tomato paste or puree and convert that into ketchup.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: That makes it easier. They just have to mix their
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: own ingredients to make the recipe, cook it, cook it down,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: and fill it into packaging. But now I think we
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: need to talk about the color briefly, off Mike. In
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: times past, I think we've we've talked about that weird
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: period of time not too long ago here in the
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: US where different ketchup manufacturers were like, let's make it.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: What green purple? Was that one? Yeah, it's bizarre. It
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: was like I think it was a hyans thing, and
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: I think you can still get them maybe, but I
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: just don't think who asked for that. That's sort of
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: the question there, you know, like who is this for?
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: I guess kids, But even with kids, the red color
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: is part of the comfort level, And it's sort of
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: like if you drink a thing that you think is
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: to be sprite, but then it turns out to be
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: soda water, it breaks your brain a little bit. So
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: the expectation of what the color of ketchup is versus
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: what the taste is. I think it's part and parcel
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: of the whole experience. So when you change one of
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: those elements, it can throw the whole thing off psychologically.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't it doesn't surprise any of us. I
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: think that multicolored ketchups didn't really take off. But as
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: bright red as ketchup is, you would think that they were,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: you know, stack in the deck a little bit. But
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: in fact, because they are using such fresh tomatoes, limiting
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: exposure to air which would prevent oxidation and therefore like
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: browning of the tomatoes, it gets that color pretty honestly, Yeah,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: it does. Ketchup doesn't actually need a bunch of additional
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: colorance to be red. Use bright red tomatoes, you get
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: a bright red ketchup tomato. Some bullsh to red tomato.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Red tomato, my right, tomato. You can't pike micromato because
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: of the lycopene that's part of the tomatoes. That's what
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: makes them red themselves. And actually catch up processors try
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: not to use iron processing equipment because that can damage
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: the red color. They also try to prevent a lot
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: of oxygen exposure, because you know how apples freshly sliced
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: can turn brown when yeah, yeah, so tomatoes can turn
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: brown if they're exposed to a lot of oxygen and
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: you know, as they being cut up. But this Isn't
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: there a way to prevent apples from turning brown by
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: like putting a slice of lemon in with them or
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: something like that, or there's something that you can do
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: to keep them from turning brown lemon juice. Huh, I'm
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: looking that up. That's right. I think you're right. Also,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: weirdly um avocados, as we know, you know, go from
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: being delightful and and and bright green to turning brown
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: very quickly too. But if you keep the pit inside
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: the half of the avocado you haven't used yet, it
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: will keep its uh it's color. Yeah. You can also
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: do that by putting them in a brown paper bag.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Is that weird? Uh? So we're so. I hope uh
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: someone is listening to this while they're cooking. Don't put
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: ketchup in your pad tie. Just know that's a trick
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: people do. We thought what better way to end today's
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: episode by doing just some tangents, a little bit of trivia.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: This is the kind of stuff that we find in
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: our research that doesn't make it into the narrative but
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: captivates Noel and Maximize so much we want to tell
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: you about it. There is a retroactively applied reason for
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: the Hines fifty seven brand. They made a reason for
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: exist other than I like numbers. Uh, And it's this
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: hind spokesman a few years back told today Food the
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: way to get ketchup out of the bottle efficiently. There's
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: a sweet spot, you know, the the logo is kind
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: of on the neck of the bottle. What you have
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: to do is put a firm tap where the bottle narrows,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: pop it on that fifty seven logo, and the catchup
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: comes out more easily. I had never heard this. Have
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: you ever heard of this? And not? Well, we're full
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: and Max is shaking his head. No, guys, we can't.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: We can't regret the times we couldn't get to catch
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: up out. Now we just look forward to the future.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: And I tried this over the weekend and it it
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: does work a little better. Still. Another interesting thing you
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: may be surprised we haven't mentioned already, is that Hyans
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: also invented probably no surprise, the catchup packet, the ubiquitous
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: catchup packet. It makes sense because while you know, certain
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: types of places that are going for more of an
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: old timey vibe and they even refill these still use
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: the glass bottles, like diners and such, if you're working
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: on a larger scale, it's probably more cost effective and
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: they'll be less like what's the word breakage? Literally, uh,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: if you get shipped just thousands of little individually wrapped
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: ketchup packets, and Hines figured out how to do that,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: creating that foil wrapper back in nineteen um and you know,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: you will occasionally see ones of those that have leaked,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: but it's much better to have a little bit of
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: leakage from what is ultimately a tiny amount of the
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: juice than shards of broken glass and gross sticky ketchup,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: you know, all over a shipment because a glass bottle
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: broke or multiple Also a little more detail in that
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: statistic we kicked at the beginning, If every household had
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: a fourteen ounce bodily catch up, the combined weight of
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: all the catch up in the United States in those
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: houses would be fifty four thousand tons heavier than the Titanic.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of catchup. I still I'm thinking, like
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: I found different different statistics for how many pounds to
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: catch up people eat. I don't know if we can
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: trust it all, so let's skip that part. But we
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: can say, andy, on a good note, as we love
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: to do, catch up might just be able to help
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: you live a little bit longer, because that likecopene, the
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: stuff that gives it that color, has also been linked
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: to reducing the risk of cancer, and it has the
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: potential to turn you into a werewolf. Yes, like like copen,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: is that the same route as like canropy? Absolutely? I
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: do have one parting note for us, and it is,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: of course the colored catch chips. I looked them up.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: They were the blasting green and funky purple, and I'll
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: tell you right now, I found a photo of the
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: funky purple fries and I have to like turn it
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: off periodically because I don't know if you guys have
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: seen me over here, but I've been uh feeling so
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: not feeling so well because it is like the most
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: disgusting thing I've every What you call it funky? What
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: implies that it has spoiled? You call it something? What's
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: the other one? Blasting green they didn't even get Like,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: blasting green sounds like a euphemism for throwing up. Yeah,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: that that's what I'm That's what I'm about I do
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: from looking at this funky purple on some fries right here,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: funky purple, Yeah, it sounds way more like the street
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: name didn't even get a literation done. And yet and
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: not not to ruin catch up for anybody, but it
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: really does go to show the psychological power of catchup
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: and then the legacy hold that it has on our
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: kind of psyche because so many people are like averse
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: to anything that even resembles blood, and yet they'll fully
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: go to a baseball game and slather a basket of
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: fries with what essentially looks like blood. Branding is so important.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: That's why, that's why Coca Cola is never going to
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: change that red color, even though people don't associate red
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: with satisfying drink unless it's soda. Uh So here we here,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: We're gonna call it today in the first part of
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: our ongoing mission to explore the history of condiments, we
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: want to hear what you think, folks, What should we
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: cover next? Actually, we want to hear from you, But
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: I also particularly want to hear from you know, and
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: you Matt, should we do the Should we do the
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: basic thing and go for mustard, like yellow and brown mustard,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: or should we should we switch it up and find
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: a different condiment. I don't know, man, I think, yeah,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: hot sauce is great. I do think mustard doesn't need
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: because it occup pies a similar kind of American you know,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: staple condiment realm as as ketchup. But obviously we know that,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: you know, there are fancy mustards and and that is
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: really something that ketchup doesn't have. So while there's the
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: basic yellow mustard frenches or whatever it might be, there's
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: also like Dijon mustard and and great poupa, and then
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: like really fancy mustards you'd get like on a charcouter
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: board or you know, more bespoke mustards. So I vote
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: we just follow it right up with mustard. I will counter.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: I think, I mean this is from the years of
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: restaurant management. We gotta go with the godfather of all condiments,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: which is the incredibly diverse of Mayo is in so
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: many things, and people don't want to. But I have
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: a buddy who, to the state, will not eat mayo
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: and will just slather honey mustard on everything, and I
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: don't want to. I feel them many times, like you
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: know what the primary greunion and of honey mustard is, right,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: And then there's also a oli, which is what you
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: call mayo when you want people to pay more for it.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: There's also when you say, I don't want to lose
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: this nol. Have you heard of most start to It's
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: not mustard? I just I just it was over pronouncing mostard,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: but no, tell me about it's a. It's a It
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: does have a mustard flavored syrup, but it's an Italian
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: condiment made with candied fruit and mustard syrup. Most start up.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know. I'm not sure about
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: that one. I know I'm on the fence about buying
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: a bottle. But if we can call it for research purposes,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: I think we should get together and try it before
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: we before we do the next episode. But yeah, awesome,
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: let's do it. Uh the eyes have it will go
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: to mustard, then we'll go to mayonnaise. Uh, and you
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: know we'll have to get hot sauce, which is probably
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: gonna be a two part or spoiler because we got
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: we all have feelings about that one. But in the meantime,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: thank you so very much to our super producer, Mr
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Max Williams. Thank you to Henry J. Hindes. Thank you
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Alex Williams who composed our track. Who else, who else?
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Who else? Who else? Oh, thanks for talking food with me. No,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: it's crazy that, Like sometimes we will just have food
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: conversations and then later we will go back and think,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: should we have recorded that? Should that have been an episode? Hey,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: you know there's always time to put that practice into practice,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: am I? Right there? We go? Yeah, agreed? Uh, And
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: speaking of practice, we'll need to have our nemesses Jonathan
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Strickland ak the Quister on air soon because he might
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: be a little rusty. It's been so long and now
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: we really need to do that. I mean, it's not
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: like it's it's not like we have pre conversations with
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: him about when these uh, these drop ins will occur.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: It's really up to him. I think the man has
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: just been busy. Uh. He really is a force of
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: nature and sort of like a specter might haunt different Actually,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: specters usually kind of tend to stick to one location,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: so that wasn't a very good example. But it is
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: actually Halloween today, and I tried. Uh. Point is he'll
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: come one, He'll come, and we will cower. Yeah, yes
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: we will. We are not cowards, but we will indeed
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: cower for power for the quister. Uh. And along the way,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: we'll thank Christo Rosciota, Steves, Jeff Cote and thanks to it.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: You know what I'll say it. I don't necessarily agree
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: with the militant stance of the Chicago hot Dog, but
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: by god, I respect him. You gotta have a code well,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: and hey, thanks to our research associate on this episode, you, sir,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Mr ben Volo. This is this is a real romp
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: and a and a gateway drug of sorts into the
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: wide world of condiments. Um. I look forward to it.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: I want to do one on Relish, to do one
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: on Cole Slaw, you know. I mean, there's just so
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: many places we could go with this. We want to
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: spread them out, obviously over time, but for spread out
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: the continents, you know, I do, Max, and I'm glad
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: that you took that opportunity and jumped right on the
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: in there with it. Um. But we will do just that,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: and until then, we'll see you next time, folks for
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: favorite shows.