Ketchup

Ketchup or catsup, is a table sauce. Traditionally, different recipes featured ketchup made of mushrooms, oysters, mussels, walnuts, or other foods, but in modern times the term without modification usually refers to tomato ketchup, often called tomato sauce, or, occasionally red sauce. It is a sweet and tangy sauce, typically made from tomatoes, a sweetener, vinegar, and assorted seasonings and spices. Seasonings vary by recipe, but commonly include onions, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, garlic, and sometimes celery. Heinz tomato ketchup, which contains 23.7g sugar and 3.1g of salt per 100g, is the market leader, with an 82% market share in the UK.

Tomato ketchup is often used as a condiment with various dishes that are usually served hot, including chips/fries, hamburgers, sandwiches, hot dogs, eggs, and grilled or fried meat. Ketchup is sometimes used as a basis or ingredient for other sauces and dressings. Ketchup is also used as a flavoring for things such as crisps/potato chips, and this variety of crisps/chips is one of the most-popular flavors in Canada. This flavor of potato chip was also recently offered in the U.S.

In the United Kingdom, preparations of ketchup were historically and originally prepared with mushroom as a primary ingredient, rather than tomato, and was sometimes referred to specifically as mushroom ketchup. In the United States, mushroom ketchup dates back to at least 1770, and was prepared by British colonists in "English speaking colonies in North America". In contemporary times, mushroom ketchup is available in the U.K., although it is not a commonly used condiment.

Many variations of ketchup were created, but the tomato-based version did not appear until about a century after other types. By 1801, a recipe for tomato ketchup was created by Sandy Addison and was later printed in an American cookbook, the Sugar House Book.

1. Get quite ripe on a dry day, squeeze them with your hands till reduced to a pulp, then put half a pound of fine salt to one hundred tomatoes, and boil them for two hours.

2. Stir them to prevent burning.

3. While hot press them through a fine sieve, with a silver spoon till nought but the skin remains, then add a little mace, 3 nutmegs, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and pepper to taste.

4. Boil over a slow fire till quite thick, stir all the time.

5. Bottle when cold.

6. One hundred tomatoes will make four or five bottles and keep good for two or three years.