Betcha' Didn't Know This !

     What is the origin of Ketchup ?

     Ketchup has its roots in seventeenth-century China.  In 1690, Chinese cooks developed a brine
     sauce of pickled fish, shellfish, and spices that they used on fish and fowl.  They called the tangy
     sauce "ke-tsiap."  This new sauce became popular and its use spread to Malaya, where it was
     called "kechop."  In the early eighteenth century, English sailors traveling to Malaysia and
     Singapore bought the kechop and brought it home to England.  English cooks tried to imitate the
     Chinese recipe, but lacking many of the Eastern ingredients, substituted mushrooms, walnuts, and
     cucumbers.
     The English called this concoction "ketchup."

     Among the several varieties of ketchup they created were oyster, walnut, anchovy, lemon and
     tomato.  Its introduction to the United States came in 1792 when a recipe for tomato "catsup"
     was published in a cookbook.  It didn't become widely popular in the United States until H.J.
     Heinz began mass producing it in 1876.

    Today, ketchup is made of tomatoes, vinegar, corn syrup, salt and other natural flavorings -
    a far cry from the Chinese fish brine sauce !   Whether you call it ketchup or catsup, over 500
    million bottles of the stuff are sold each year in the United States.