Ketchup and Other Condiments: An Origin Story
Fun Fact: 97% of U.S. households have a bottle of ketchup in their fridge. Do you?
In my defense, I no longer believe it.
In earlier years of my life, I admit, I believed ketchup came from a bottle. Like most of our ingrained beliefs, we aren’t even aware we have them—until we are confronted with a different truth. I didn’t realize how much I accepted that certain foods came to me off a shelf. My ketchup shake-up, unexpected wake-up, arrived when I was fourteen.
The Thailand of the 1980s that I lived in as a U.S. teenager did not have readily available ketchup on grocery shelves. Nope. You know the bottle, the one with the comfortable white cap nested above two numbers on its octagonal glass frame. Hot sauce, fish sauce, yes. Red Bull, yes, before it was branded for the U.S. market, sold under the name Krating Daeng (Thai for bull red), and bought by many tired high school classmates by caffeine strength, named like powerful firecrackers: M-100, M-150.
A teenage Sarah going to a school dance in Bangkok, Thailand.
If you could find American ketchup, it was expensive. The bottle slapped with a white import label covered in six-point black Thai type: country of origin, ingredients, tariffs, customs duties tax. Our family never bought one bottle. One day, out of our kitchen sprang homemade ketchup. Wait, what?! I had no idea…
It’s a bit embarrassing to admit this a-ha moment. Then, it’s fascinating to realize, there are some foods that, to me even today, come off a shelf—seemingly born in a box, or in a package.
When’s the last time I made mustard, mayonnaise, ricotta, puffed or corn-flake-like cereal…? Ramen noodles, ranch, tofu, tempeh, crackers of all kinds… mm, those flaky leavened ones? Ketchup…?! I do realize that you, as cool Co-op people, are the most likely of any to say, Well, just yesterday I made/brewed/stewed my own _________. But play along with me. For most of us today, cereals, cheese, crackers, and condiments come from a grocery shelf. Not our kitchen pots.
Not everyone, I know. I loved the time when a neighbor friend invited us to taste test their three different batches of root beer. That’s right, my mind was a little blown that it came from their brew keg. Not a can. One of the three versions was an old-timey recipe that tasted downright medicinal. Sufferin’ sassafras! I rather liked that root-forward walk back in time.
Today, the industry of food has been long established. “In the late nineteenth century, the emergence of processed food altered the daily consumption habits of millions of U.S. households,” notes historian Nancy F. Koehn, in a Smithsonian essay on Heinz’ early marketing. “Bottled horseradish, canned coffee, packaged meat, boxed cereal, and other mass-produced foodstuffs began to appear on urban grocery store shelves in the decades after the Civil War.”
And here we are. How did two ubiquitous U.S. sauces travel from stovetop to cupboard staple?
Origins of Ranch Dressing
Ranch dressing is as American as it gets. The mild creamy herb-rich dressing was created in 1949 by a Black American who made his riches in Alaska as a contract plumber. Steve Hensen created the buttermilk dressing to accompany the meals he served to his work crews on job sites. The plumber-turned-cowboy did well enough to retire at 35 and move with his wife Gayle to California, where they bought a ranch. Fathom a guess at its name?... Hidden Valley Ranch.
The Hensens hosted parties where they served the tangy dressing (alongside steaks) to guests visiting the ranch. Perhaps young and restless, Steve introduced the recipe to some local businesses near their Santa Barbara farm (one still serves what they claim is his original recipe). Soon, they established a mail order business, sending packets of dressing around the country. Customers added buttermilk and mayonnaise to the original 75 cent seasoning packet. In 1972, Hensen sold the business for a cool $8 million. Stores sold only the dry ranch mix until 1983 when shelf-stable bottles of the creamy dressing came along. The Cool Ranch Doritos phenomena hit the grocery scene shortly after. Today, ranch dressing keeps strange bed fellows, part successful marketing, part undeniable creamy, cool coating as complement to chicken wings, nuggets, pizza, and buffalo cauliflower. Yup, about as American as it gets.
Origins of Ketchup
Ketchup’s birth story, on the other hand, begins in China, as a dark sauce thin in texture and based on pickled fish parts. In Cantonese, the condiment was called “keh-jup” or “koe-cheup,” meaning fish sauce. The fermented sauce stored well. This led, in the early 1700s, to Dutch and British merchants bringing Chinese ketchup to Europe, where cooks tried to recreate the sauce and ended up adding new ingredients. Nope, not tomatoes yet. In 1700s Great Britain, “catsup” was made mostly of mushrooms and included oysters, anchovies, or walnuts. Seems the sauce morphed from fermented Chinese fish to a sort of Euro fungi-shellfish chutney.
Versions of the sauce we know today didn’t show up until 1812, when an American horticulturist created the first known tomato-based ketchup (and brandy) recipe. Soon after, tomato-based versions appeared in Europe and the USA, though still contained earlier ingredients like oysters and anchovies. Pharmacies in the 1830s started to sell tomato ketchup as a medicine for diarrhea, jaundice, and indigestion. Farmers at the time primarily prepared the country’s ketchup supply. It was another method of conserving tomatoes. U.S. companies took note of ketchup’s growing popularity and decided to enter the game. Hence… Heinz. 1869. And, following: my well-branded “ketchup bottle” brain more than 100 years later.
Just goes to show. You can take the girl out of America, but you can’t take American branding out of the girl.
Skagit writer and eater Sarah Stoner grew up in Uganda, Morocco, Belgium, and Thailand and lived in the U.S. for the first time at age 18. Long after high school in Southeast Asia, Sarah planted herself in the Skagit Valley area with her family where she unabashedly buys ketchup off the shelf. sarahjstoner@hotmail.com
Homemade Ketchup
Result = Yum.
Cook: 5 min. Prep: 20 min. Total: 25 Min. Yield: 22 servings (one Tbsp/serving).
Ingredients
6 oz can tomato paste
1/4 cup honey, or agave
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup water
1 tsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/8 tsp garlic powder
Directions
Combine all the ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat; whisk until smooth.
When it comes to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring often.
Remove from heat and cover until cool. Store refrigerated.
Smashburger Sauce
Credit to my 14-year-old for introducing our family to this sauce—we no longer eat homemade burgers without it. Katherine wings the sauce with no measurements, and we scrape the mixing bowl clean. No leftovers.
What’s a smashburger, you ask? Thin, crispy Internet-sensation patties made from flattening small balls of ground beef in the pan while cooking. Served as a stack of patties on one bun with sauce between each.
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup ketchup
1 Tbsp yellow mustard
1 Tbsp pickle juice or Worcestershire sauce, to taste
1 Tbsp dill pickles, onion or shallot, chopped, optional
1 Tbsp sambal, horseradish or sriracha, for kick, optional
1 pinch garlic powder
1 pinch salt
1 pinch fresh cracked black pepper
Directions
Combine all the ingredients in a jar and shake, or in a bowl for a good whisk to combine. Adjust ingredients to taste, Katherine-style.
Homemade Ranch Dressing
Channel that OG Hidden Valley. Use a little more salt to make as a dressing, and a little less when serving it as a dip.
1/2 cup cold buttermilk, or kefir
1/2 cup cold sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp onion powder, or 2 Tbsp finely chopped chives
1 tsp dried parsley leaves, or 2 Tbsp finest chopped Italian parsley leaves
1/2 tsp dried dill, or 1 Tbsp chopped fresh dill
1/2 tsp garlic powder, or 3 medium garlic cloves (1 Tbsp finely grated garlic)
1/2 tsp fine sea salt, plus more to taste
1/2 tsp freshly cracked black pepper, or to taste
Directions
Simply combine all the ranch ingredients in a bowl and give it a good whisk to combine. Store refrigerated.