11 ms·

When Every Ketchup but One Went Extinct

114 points by dynm 4y ago

oDot 4y ago
A "fun" fact about Heinz Ketchup, especially considering the brand's history with the condiment, is that Osem, an Israeli food company, had successfully lobbied the regulator to prohibit Heinz from calling it's ketchup ketchup, due to it "not containing enough tomatoes".
- chronogram 4y ago
  My bottle of Heinz right here on the ingredient list says: "Ingredients: Tomatoes (200g per 100g Tomato Ketchup), vinegar, lemon juice from concentrate, potassium chloride, acid (malic acid), citrus fiber, spice and herb extracts (contain CELERY), sweetener (sucralose)" how many more tomatoes does it need?
  - mrmincent 4y ago
    200g of tomato per 100g of ketchup is a very weird way of putting it, but if I understand how they’ve written it to mean 200g of tomato goes into each 100g portion of ketchup, then that’s basically 10g of tomato solids for each 100g of ketchup (assuming 95% of tomato is water, which I think it is). Doesn’t actually seem like that much. Disclaimer - I am not a smart person and could be very wrong on all of this.
    - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      Counting solids doesn't make sense unless you're evaluating ketchup powder. Ketchup itself is mostly water.
    - chronogram 4y ago
      I've checked some other brands online and it makes me wonder if it's due to a local ketchup law or simply a marketing thing. Store brand 156 per 100, organic store brand 120 per 100, competing brand 140 per 100, a different competing brand 180 per 100, Heinz classic 148 per 100, Heinz organic 180 per 100. They all mention it.
    - asddubs 4y ago
      maybe it's not that much, but it's more than an actual tomato has
    - Jiro 4y ago
      By that reasoning if you sold someone a tomato, that's 10g of tomato solids for each 200g of tomato, and actual tomatoes need to be labelled as "contains 5% tomato".
      - yakak 4y ago
        Not really, the tomato is 5% tomato solids and 100% tomato. The ketchup is some percentage solids and another percentage vinegar, so unless they use tomato vinegar..
  - Adverblessly 4y ago
    This is just cronyism, so "how many tomatoes does it need" is an ever shifting line that is always somewhere in the middle between how many Heinz use and how many Osem use. IIRC the actual difference is rather small. (Well, this isn't strictly true, IIRC there have been a few changes over the years to both of their recipes and the regulations and Heinz were allowed to call themselves Ketchup for some of the time, but you get my point)
- andsoitis 4y ago
  What do they call it? Tomato Sauce?
  - Adverblessly 4y ago
    It is מתבל עגבניות instead of קטשופ. I'd translate it as "Tomato Dip", though strictly speaking that may be an inaccruate translation. A "dip" in Hebrew should be מטבל since ט.ב.ל. is a root that means "to dip" so מטבל would be a "thing" for dipping. Heinz's sauce however is מתבל which is a homonym but has a different root ת.ב.ל. which that relates to spices. Strictly speaking that isn't an official word then, but you can understand they are evoking both "Dip" and "Spice" with their chosen "word". IIRC while the labeling in Hebrew uses that word, the bottles still have their original labels in English (on the other side of the bottle) saying "Ketchup", making the whole affair extra stupid.
- compsciphd 4y ago
  its sort of true, but doesn't seem to be fully enforced. Heinz's Mayochup is sold in Israel as "רוטב בטעם מיונז ןקטשופ" (sauce in the flavor of of mayonnaise and ketchup, and yes, they spell the last word without a sofit form). Now, perhaps they can get around it because its "sauce in the flavor of ketchup" and not simply "ketchup", but then I dont know why they would just label it regularly as that. Personally, I prefer heinz "not ketchup" to osem brand, but that can be my american trained pallate.
bobthepanda 4y ago
Related to the death of other tomato ketchups; tomato was not the original dominant ketchup in the US. Mushroom ketchups predate tomato ketchup by a century.
- desro 4y ago
  Sounds fascinating! Can you say more?
  - gurchik 4y ago
    Here's a recipe from the 18th century: https://youtube.com/watch?v=29u_FejNuks https://youtube.com/watch?v=29u_FejNuks
  - scommab 4y ago
    If you want to learn more here is a great video with both the history and recipe for mushroom ketchup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29u_FejNuks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29u_FejNuks
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    As with most food history a lot of this is debated. One version is that the British encountered a fermented fish sauce somewhere in Asia and transliterated the name as ketchup. They then liked it, and tried to reverse engineer it with what was available at home and what they remembered of the taste. Ketchup shows up in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1682. The English bring their recipes to the United States, and their descendants make mushroom ketchups, but also walnut ketchups, oyster ketchups, and all sorts of things. As late as 1913 Webster defines ketchup listing mushroom first, then tomato, then walnut. Tomato ketchup becomes dominant in the early 20th century through the events described in this article, which not only destroyed most of Heinz’s tomato competition but all the other ketchups too. There are also other, more modern ketchups. A personal favorite is Filipino banana ketchup, which was developed when that country was cut off from tomatoes during WWII.
    - thematrixturtle 4y ago
AnotherGoodName 4y ago
This probably sounds silly but is marketing why tomato sauce is often in sachets rather than added to your burger directly? To explain: in most parts of the world unless you say no sauce the burger will have sauce added as they make it. I've found in the US they give you a dry burger and then more sachets than you need of sauce. Which you then take and add yourself. It's a minor weird difference. I find it an annoyance myself 'why do I need to put my own sauce on, can't they do it when they make it?'. I've always wondered why the US burger joints seem to consistently do it this way. The only thing I can guess is that they want to show you that it's Heinz sauce.
- CogitoCogito 4y ago
  Basically every burger place I’ve ever eaten at in the US puts sauce directly on the burger unless you specifically ask otherwise.
- jamesjyu 4y ago
  I think has more to do with how varied it is how you want your ketchup on your burger. Ie. some like to put it on the patty evenly while others dip. FWIW, this is also how ketchup is served at backyard bbqs: you give your friends a "dry" burger and direct them to where the ketchup, mustard, and other condiments are.
- petmon 4y ago
  It's about personal taste: some people want no ketchup on a burger, others only a little, some want a lot. Separate ketchup gives the customer that choice. Those little ketchup packs get thrown out a lot. The bottled stuff tastes better anyways.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Somehow those feel lot more like single use plastic we should combat and not the plastic straws...
- acchow 4y ago
  It's so people can decide for themselves how much ketchup to add.
matxip 4y ago
A related video on the topic that I found pretty interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWlqxGQXZx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWlqxGQXZx8 It goes over an older Ketchup recipe and gives some related history. If you like historical food recipes and/or culinary history, you might want to check the channel out.
- djxfade 4y ago
  His channel is one of my favorite food related ones. So much interesting history
konart 4y ago
I still can't unserstand why would anyone prefer Heinz to anything else. It has almost no flavor except vinegar... Don't tell me you have nothing to chose from in the US?
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Funnily I would have said the same thing, replacing vinegar by sugar.
  - jakogut 4y ago
    Both vinegar and sugar are in the top three ingredients. > Simply Heinz™ is made from the basics: red ripe tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt, and a special blend of spices and flavorings. Sauce: https://www.heinz.com/product/00013000004640/heinz-simply-tomato-ketchup-no-artificial-sweeteners-31-oz-bottle https://www.heinz.com/product/00013000004640/heinz-simply-to...
- dotancohen 4y ago
  In my country Heinz is sold as "tomato sauce", not ketchup, because it does not have enough tomato to meet the definition of ketchup.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    What is the definition of ketchup? If you asked me, I'd define it as a mixture of tomato product, sugar, and vinegar.
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      That's a good question, and I don't know the answer. Presumably it's defined in some law somewhere. Why there exists such a law is a good question in itself.
      - messe 4y ago
        > Why there exists such a law is a good question in itself. They generally exist to avoid companies misrepresenting their products and misleading consumers.
ohazi 4y ago
IMHO, the tangy organic ketchup from Trader Joe's is the best ketchup.
thewebcount 4y ago
I hadn’t thought much about ketchup when my spouse brought home Heinz Organic Ketchup. I didn’t really think it would be any different, but it tasted awful! We ended up throwing it out after using it once or twice because it was just so different from what we were used to. A few years later they were out of the regular stuff at the local store, so we ended up with another version (also by Heinz) that uses Stevia instead of sugar. It is also disgusting. I wouldn’t have thought of myself as any kind of ketchup purist or loyal to a brand or whatever, but I’ve become so accustomed to Heinz regular ketchup that even their other versions of the same brand taste wildly off to me.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  The best version of Heinz is actually one marketed specifically for not having artificial sweetners: https://www.heinz.com/product/00013000004640/heinz-simply-tomato-ketchup-no-artificial-sweeteners-31-oz-bottle https://www.heinz.com/product/00013000004640/heinz-simply-to... It tastes better (better better, not "healthy" better) than the normal stuff and drops the HFCS
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    It's a strange branding, since their "tomato ketchup" product also contains no artificial sweeteners. As far as I see, none of their ketchups do.
    - BoorishBears 4y ago
      High Fructose Corn Syrup is considered an artificial sweetener depending on how it's made: https://www.idfa.org/news/letter-from-fda-clarifies-natural-status-of-high-fructose-corn-syrup https://www.idfa.org/news/letter-from-fda-clarifies-natural-... The fact they're branding this as natural, but not the normal formula, would imply this is the reason
- herbst 4y ago
  It's interesting how different ketchup tastes can be, also culturally to some degree. That green Heinz bottle, not the Stevia one, but with organic tomatoes and sugar, for some reason is one of the best big brand ketchups I've tasted. I don't like their normal ketchup tho, it's just to sweet for my taste.
dabedee 4y ago
I remember seeing my mom add small quantities of ketchup in certain stews and other sauce-based dishes. To me, ketchup has the perfect balance of flavors and helps create umami. Even well-known chefs use it sparingly to improve their creations [1]. - [1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/20/why-is-ketchup-so-delicious-science-answers-big-food-questions https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/20/why-is-...
- herbst 4y ago
  As someone who avoids 'prefab' products in cooking. Using a little tomato extract/paste and rounding the sauce/stew up later with some milk (for the sugars) pretty much creates the same result why people swear on ketchup. I adapted this from Italian Cousine. A traditional bolognese works like that too.
- baud147258 4y ago
  Most of the ketchup I use at home ends up in my salad dressings... The recipe I used is equal part olive oil and balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, Ketchup, pepper and some Herbes de Provence. The end result is a thick, strongly tasting vinaigrette, it doesn't go with every salad, but I like it a lot.
autoexec 4y ago
> "Heinz stood at the forefront of food hygiene, so regulations would only help the company command high prices and maintain its reputation." I assume he's just saying it wouldn't have hurt, since those regulations also helped prevent a ton of people from getting sick from the preservatives that were poisoning them. I see the "regulations only ever benefit the big players in an industry" argument so often that seeing a line like that in an article seems more ambiguous than was probably intended.
te_chris 4y ago
Thankfully Mutti exists.
- 7373737373 4y ago
  One product that for some reason hasn't reached the US yet is Hela Gewürz (spice) ketchup, especially in its popular curry and spicy variants
cjrp 4y ago
I thought all ketchups were about the same, until a Polish friend brought some back with them (Pudliszki). I never knew ketchup could taste like actual tomatoes!
- busymom0 4y ago
  When I immigrated from India, the very first thing I noticed was that ketchup tastes very different.
  - wil421 4y ago
    If India is anything like South America, the ketchup is much more watery. Even Heinz. At first I thought it was a different recipe but they do it to make it cheaper by adding extra water. Same with packaging, lots of stuff in plastic bags instead of plastic bottles.
- Tade0 4y ago
  I find this very interesting, because Pudliszki is generally considered suspicious around here in Poland because it's laced with sugar. For generations now children in kindergarten have been repeating the phrase "ketchup Pudliszki przeczyści Ci kiszki"("Pudliszki ketchup will clear out your guts"). Kotlin (no relation to the programming language. Or is there? We may never know) I believe has much less sugar. Anyway if you ever get the chance go to McDonald's in Italy and ask for ketchup - it's 0,50€ per portion, but the taste is completely different than anywhere in Europe.
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    Ah Italy, they somehow handle anything tomato-related differently, and I mean better. Currently baking alive on vacation in Sicily, tomatoes from basic stores taste much better than regular ones I can buy in Switzerland, any time of the year. When they do pasta with red sauce its something I want to pack and take home with us and just clone forever. I mean obviously their home made pasta al dente is superb, but those extra more-red-than-red sauces are also on another level. Country seems a bit broken and drivers dont seem to recognize basic traffic rules, but food is up there, pretty consistently.
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mcv 4y ago
> The first recorded recipe for a home-fermented tomato catsup was published in 1810, a descendant of British imitations of Asian “cat-sup,” or fermented fish sauce, that the British encountered on colonial voyages. Do they mean kecap? Does this mean the similarity in name between ketchup and kecap is not a coincidence, but ketchup really started out as an imitation of the other. Must have been a hell of a journey, because today they are absolutely nothing alike.
- busymom0 4y ago
  This video goes over the history of ketchup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWlqxGQXZx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWlqxGQXZx8
red_admiral 4y ago
Interesting read, but 'extinct' is a strong word - here in the UK, most supermarkets sell their own brand of ketchup alongside Heinz one, but slightly cheaper. With the cost of living crisis, I would expect them to gain in market share soon. (There are also "artisan" ketchups, but they're a very niche product.)
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WalterBright 4y ago
Extinct? Amazon lists lots of different ketchups.
pleb_nz 4y ago
Give me a hot sauce over ketchup or tomato sauce any day. Sour, salty, chilli flavours and a good hit of heat.
HisNameIsTor 4y ago
[in the USA] Here in Sweden, the most popular brand isn't Heinz, but Felix. https://www.felix.se/app/uploads/sites/33/2022/03/220209_Felix_Range-Ketchup_1200x750px-1200x750.jpg https://www.felix.se/app/uploads/sites/33/2022/03/220209_Fel...
- deleted 4y ago
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- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Really? The Austrian Ketchup brand? Ha, I though that's just in Austria.
  - dagw 4y ago
    Probably a different Felix. The Swedish Felix was started in and is based in Sweden. Although it's currently owned by a Norwegian conglomerate. edit: Felix Austria is a daughter company of Felix Sweden, founded by the same Mr Felix a couple of decades later.
    - checkyoursudo 4y ago
      Looking at the felix.se and felix.at websites, it seems that probably Felix Austria was created in 1958 to serve the Austrian market. The Swedish website says Herbert Felix (a Czech immigrant to Sweden) started making pickles in Sweden in 1939. They use basically the same logo, and they are both owned by Orkla, so I suspect that Felix AT was a spin-off at some point to serve the Austrian market specifically.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      Nope, apparently it's the same Czech/Austrian Herbert Felix who founded the brand in Sweden then brought it to Austria[1]. Now I'm itching to try the Swedish Felix and see how it compares to the Austrian one. Also TIL that: "Sweden has the world's highest consumption of tomato ketchup, and Felix is by far the biggest brand, almost twice as big as its nearest competitor." Why do Swedes eat so much ketchup?! [1] https://www.orkla.se/brands/felix/ https://www.orkla.se/brands/felix/
rawoke083600 4y ago
In South Africa, the most popular brand is "All Gold Tomato Sauce", to be fair I can't reallly taste the difference, between a 'boerrie'[0] with heinz or all-gold. [0] South African word for a "hot-dog" but the sausage is actually real meat sausage (boerewors), the sausage itself is kinda unique and amazing as well.
bambax 4y ago
> A few years later, after a woman in Pennsylvania sent Heinz a dozen bottles of her homemade, tastier, better-looking, benzoate-free ketchup, they adopted her recipe, which was also sweet, vinegary, and thick. So the person responsible for the taste of ketchup, a woman, is barely alluded to, and not even named? I don't think of myself as a feminist, but this is pushing it.
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  It's a quote from "Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment" by Andrew F. Smith, who appears to be the only source I could find for this claim.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    The book cites the following as a reference: "Testimony of Sebastian Mueller, Curtice Brothers v. Harry E. Barnard et al., in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, 4:2989-995; Testimony of G. F. Mason, Curtice Brothers v. Harry E. Barnard et al., in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, 4:2966, in the National Archives-Great Lakes Region, Chicago" A quick search on "Curtice Brothers v. Harry E. Barnard" only refers back to the book. Didn't care to look beyond that to see if the case is online.
    - mminer237 4y ago
      The case itself is on Westlaw at least, but the opinion doesn't mention Heinz at all. PACER only goes back to 1989, so I suspect you'd have to actually go to Chicago in person to read the testimony.
    - jcranmer 4y ago
      The opinion for this case appears to be accessible here: https://cite.case.law/f/209/589/ https://cite.case.law/f/209/589/ (it's 209 F. 589, for anyone who knows how to turn that cite into a usable opinion). From scanning the opinion, it looks like the book cite is referring to testimony before a special master, probably convened to look into the factual matter of whether or not benzoate is a harmful chemical.
xani_ 4y ago
I'm still disappointed we can't readily buy a pizza sauce in ketchup bottle form
IshKebab 4y ago
There are some other ketchups on the market. Stoke's ketchup is available in supermarkets and is delicious and expensive and they have a few different flavours. Very interesting article anyway!
cafard 4y ago
Not quite twenty years ago, we happened to look into an old book of handwritten recipes belonging to my mother-in-law. On Labor Day weekend, we bought a big box of "seconds" tomatoes from a local farm stand, and spent the weekend cooking them down and making ketchup. We did the same the next summer; then we bought a fixer-upper house, and for some years had no lazy long weekends. It was good ketchup, though our son (mid-teens) preferred the store-bought product. All it takes is time, which I suspect is at something of a premium among the HN crowd.
kleiba 4y ago
Also an interesting read: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/15/346794301/language-of-food-reveals-mysteries-of-menu-words-and-ketchup https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/15/346794301/la...
LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
Pfft. You don't know about: (·)https://www.hela.eu/en/hela-at-home/products/product-finder/product-settings/Product/show/product-uid/spice-ketchup-curry-extra-hot-800-ml/ https://www.hela.eu/en/hela-at-home/products/product-finder/...
dzhiurgis 4y ago
No idea why (might be crunchy palette) but in New Zealand it’s near impossible to find ketchup in shelves. I’d say 95% if not more of supermarket is all tomato sauce, no ketchup in sight.
gavindean90 4y ago
It’s incredible to think that since the homemade catsups were home fermented they were rich in probiotics and digestive enzymes and naturally safe from food related pathogens. They were replaced with a product that, while safe is produced correctly, is more vulnerable to pathogens that are very deadly (c. botulinum). It really seems like a huge loss for public health.
alexalx666 4y ago
you can make a ketchup from scratch pretty easily (if you already use some of the ingredients in your meal it wont add much to your cooking time): 1) put cut tomatoes in a small-mid sized bowl (add tomato paste if you want it more thick) 2) add salt/pepper 3) add vinegar (choose accord to taste u want) 4) blend it or smash it

114 points by dynm 4y ago

oDot 4y ago

A "fun" fact about Heinz Ketchup, especially considering the brand's history with the condiment, is that Osem, an Israeli food company, had successfully lobbied the regulator to prohibit Heinz from calling it's ketchup ketchup, due to it "not containing enough tomatoes".

chronogram 4y ago
My bottle of Heinz right here on the ingredient list says: "Ingredients: Tomatoes (200g per 100g Tomato Ketchup), vinegar, lemon juice from concentrate, potassium chloride, acid (malic acid), citrus fiber, spice and herb extracts (contain CELERY), sweetener (sucralose)" how many more tomatoes does it need?
- mrmincent 4y ago
  200g of tomato per 100g of ketchup is a very weird way of putting it, but if I understand how they’ve written it to mean 200g of tomato goes into each 100g portion of ketchup, then that’s basically 10g of tomato solids for each 100g of ketchup (assuming 95% of tomato is water, which I think it is). Doesn’t actually seem like that much. Disclaimer - I am not a smart person and could be very wrong on all of this.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    Counting solids doesn't make sense unless you're evaluating ketchup powder. Ketchup itself is mostly water.
  - chronogram 4y ago
    I've checked some other brands online and it makes me wonder if it's due to a local ketchup law or simply a marketing thing. Store brand 156 per 100, organic store brand 120 per 100, competing brand 140 per 100, a different competing brand 180 per 100, Heinz classic 148 per 100, Heinz organic 180 per 100. They all mention it.
  - asddubs 4y ago
    maybe it's not that much, but it's more than an actual tomato has
  - Jiro 4y ago
    By that reasoning if you sold someone a tomato, that's 10g of tomato solids for each 200g of tomato, and actual tomatoes need to be labelled as "contains 5% tomato".
    - yakak 4y ago
      Not really, the tomato is 5% tomato solids and 100% tomato. The ketchup is some percentage solids and another percentage vinegar, so unless they use tomato vinegar..
- Adverblessly 4y ago
  This is just cronyism, so "how many tomatoes does it need" is an ever shifting line that is always somewhere in the middle between how many Heinz use and how many Osem use. IIRC the actual difference is rather small. (Well, this isn't strictly true, IIRC there have been a few changes over the years to both of their recipes and the regulations and Heinz were allowed to call themselves Ketchup for some of the time, but you get my point)
andsoitis 4y ago
What do they call it? Tomato Sauce?
- Adverblessly 4y ago
  It is מתבל עגבניות instead of קטשופ. I'd translate it as "Tomato Dip", though strictly speaking that may be an inaccruate translation. A "dip" in Hebrew should be מטבל since ט.ב.ל. is a root that means "to dip" so מטבל would be a "thing" for dipping. Heinz's sauce however is מתבל which is a homonym but has a different root ת.ב.ל. which that relates to spices. Strictly speaking that isn't an official word then, but you can understand they are evoking both "Dip" and "Spice" with their chosen "word". IIRC while the labeling in Hebrew uses that word, the bottles still have their original labels in English (on the other side of the bottle) saying "Ketchup", making the whole affair extra stupid.
compsciphd 4y ago
its sort of true, but doesn't seem to be fully enforced. Heinz's Mayochup is sold in Israel as "רוטב בטעם מיונז ןקטשופ" (sauce in the flavor of of mayonnaise and ketchup, and yes, they spell the last word without a sofit form). Now, perhaps they can get around it because its "sauce in the flavor of ketchup" and not simply "ketchup", but then I dont know why they would just label it regularly as that. Personally, I prefer heinz "not ketchup" to osem brand, but that can be my american trained pallate.

bobthepanda 4y ago

Related to the death of other tomato ketchups; tomato was not the original dominant ketchup in the US. Mushroom ketchups predate tomato ketchup by a century.

desro 4y ago
Sounds fascinating! Can you say more?
- gurchik 4y ago
  Here's a recipe from the 18th century: https://youtube.com/watch?v=29u_FejNuks https://youtube.com/watch?v=29u_FejNuks
- scommab 4y ago
  If you want to learn more here is a great video with both the history and recipe for mushroom ketchup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29u_FejNuks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29u_FejNuks
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  As with most food history a lot of this is debated. One version is that the British encountered a fermented fish sauce somewhere in Asia and transliterated the name as ketchup. They then liked it, and tried to reverse engineer it with what was available at home and what they remembered of the taste. Ketchup shows up in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1682. The English bring their recipes to the United States, and their descendants make mushroom ketchups, but also walnut ketchups, oyster ketchups, and all sorts of things. As late as 1913 Webster defines ketchup listing mushroom first, then tomato, then walnut. Tomato ketchup becomes dominant in the early 20th century through the events described in this article, which not only destroyed most of Heinz’s tomato competition but all the other ketchups too. There are also other, more modern ketchups. A personal favorite is Filipino banana ketchup, which was developed when that country was cut off from tomatoes during WWII.
  - thematrixturtle 4y ago

AnotherGoodName 4y ago

This probably sounds silly but is marketing why tomato sauce is often in sachets rather than added to your burger directly? To explain: in most parts of the world unless you say no sauce the burger will have sauce added as they make it. I've found in the US they give you a dry burger and then more sachets than you need of sauce. Which you then take and add yourself. It's a minor weird difference. I find it an annoyance myself 'why do I need to put my own sauce on, can't they do it when they make it?'. I've always wondered why the US burger joints seem to consistently do it this way. The only thing I can guess is that they want to show you that it's Heinz sauce.

CogitoCogito 4y ago
Basically every burger place I’ve ever eaten at in the US puts sauce directly on the burger unless you specifically ask otherwise.
jamesjyu 4y ago
I think has more to do with how varied it is how you want your ketchup on your burger. Ie. some like to put it on the patty evenly while others dip. FWIW, this is also how ketchup is served at backyard bbqs: you give your friends a "dry" burger and direct them to where the ketchup, mustard, and other condiments are.
petmon 4y ago
It's about personal taste: some people want no ketchup on a burger, others only a little, some want a lot. Separate ketchup gives the customer that choice. Those little ketchup packs get thrown out a lot. The bottled stuff tastes better anyways.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Somehow those feel lot more like single use plastic we should combat and not the plastic straws...
acchow 4y ago
It's so people can decide for themselves how much ketchup to add.

matxip 4y ago

A related video on the topic that I found pretty interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWlqxGQXZx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWlqxGQXZx8 It goes over an older Ketchup recipe and gives some related history. If you like historical food recipes and/or culinary history, you might want to check the channel out.

djxfade 4y ago
His channel is one of my favorite food related ones. So much interesting history

konart 4y ago

I still can't unserstand why would anyone prefer Heinz to anything else. It has almost no flavor except vinegar... Don't tell me you have nothing to chose from in the US?

prmoustache 4y ago
Funnily I would have said the same thing, replacing vinegar by sugar.
- jakogut 4y ago
  Both vinegar and sugar are in the top three ingredients. > Simply Heinz™ is made from the basics: red ripe tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt, and a special blend of spices and flavorings. Sauce: https://www.heinz.com/product/00013000004640/heinz-simply-tomato-ketchup-no-artificial-sweeteners-31-oz-bottle https://www.heinz.com/product/00013000004640/heinz-simply-to...
dotancohen 4y ago
In my country Heinz is sold as "tomato sauce", not ketchup, because it does not have enough tomato to meet the definition of ketchup.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  What is the definition of ketchup? If you asked me, I'd define it as a mixture of tomato product, sugar, and vinegar.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    That's a good question, and I don't know the answer. Presumably it's defined in some law somewhere. Why there exists such a law is a good question in itself.
    - messe 4y ago
      > Why there exists such a law is a good question in itself. They generally exist to avoid companies misrepresenting their products and misleading consumers.

ohazi 4y ago

IMHO, the tangy organic ketchup from Trader Joe's is the best ketchup.

thewebcount 4y ago

I hadn’t thought much about ketchup when my spouse brought home Heinz Organic Ketchup. I didn’t really think it would be any different, but it tasted awful! We ended up throwing it out after using it once or twice because it was just so different from what we were used to. A few years later they were out of the regular stuff at the local store, so we ended up with another version (also by Heinz) that uses Stevia instead of sugar. It is also disgusting. I wouldn’t have thought of myself as any kind of ketchup purist or loyal to a brand or whatever, but I’ve become so accustomed to Heinz regular ketchup that even their other versions of the same brand taste wildly off to me.

BoorishBears 4y ago
The best version of Heinz is actually one marketed specifically for not having artificial sweetners: https://www.heinz.com/product/00013000004640/heinz-simply-tomato-ketchup-no-artificial-sweeteners-31-oz-bottle https://www.heinz.com/product/00013000004640/heinz-simply-to... It tastes better (better better, not "healthy" better) than the normal stuff and drops the HFCS
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  It's a strange branding, since their "tomato ketchup" product also contains no artificial sweeteners. As far as I see, none of their ketchups do.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    High Fructose Corn Syrup is considered an artificial sweetener depending on how it's made: https://www.idfa.org/news/letter-from-fda-clarifies-natural-status-of-high-fructose-corn-syrup https://www.idfa.org/news/letter-from-fda-clarifies-natural-... The fact they're branding this as natural, but not the normal formula, would imply this is the reason
herbst 4y ago
It's interesting how different ketchup tastes can be, also culturally to some degree. That green Heinz bottle, not the Stevia one, but with organic tomatoes and sugar, for some reason is one of the best big brand ketchups I've tasted. I don't like their normal ketchup tho, it's just to sweet for my taste.

dabedee 4y ago

I remember seeing my mom add small quantities of ketchup in certain stews and other sauce-based dishes. To me, ketchup has the perfect balance of flavors and helps create umami. Even well-known chefs use it sparingly to improve their creations [1]. - [1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/20/why-is-ketchup-so-delicious-science-answers-big-food-questions https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/20/why-is-...

herbst 4y ago
As someone who avoids 'prefab' products in cooking. Using a little tomato extract/paste and rounding the sauce/stew up later with some milk (for the sugars) pretty much creates the same result why people swear on ketchup. I adapted this from Italian Cousine. A traditional bolognese works like that too.
baud147258 4y ago
Most of the ketchup I use at home ends up in my salad dressings... The recipe I used is equal part olive oil and balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, Ketchup, pepper and some Herbes de Provence. The end result is a thick, strongly tasting vinaigrette, it doesn't go with every salad, but I like it a lot.

autoexec 4y ago

> "Heinz stood at the forefront of food hygiene, so regulations would only help the company command high prices and maintain its reputation." I assume he's just saying it wouldn't have hurt, since those regulations also helped prevent a ton of people from getting sick from the preservatives that were poisoning them. I see the "regulations only ever benefit the big players in an industry" argument so often that seeing a line like that in an article seems more ambiguous than was probably intended.

te_chris 4y ago

Thankfully Mutti exists.

7373737373 4y ago
One product that for some reason hasn't reached the US yet is Hela Gewürz (spice) ketchup, especially in its popular curry and spicy variants

cjrp 4y ago

I thought all ketchups were about the same, until a Polish friend brought some back with them (Pudliszki). I never knew ketchup could taste like actual tomatoes!

busymom0 4y ago
When I immigrated from India, the very first thing I noticed was that ketchup tastes very different.
- wil421 4y ago
  If India is anything like South America, the ketchup is much more watery. Even Heinz. At first I thought it was a different recipe but they do it to make it cheaper by adding extra water. Same with packaging, lots of stuff in plastic bags instead of plastic bottles.
Tade0 4y ago
I find this very interesting, because Pudliszki is generally considered suspicious around here in Poland because it's laced with sugar. For generations now children in kindergarten have been repeating the phrase "ketchup Pudliszki przeczyści Ci kiszki"("Pudliszki ketchup will clear out your guts"). Kotlin (no relation to the programming language. Or is there? We may never know) I believe has much less sugar. Anyway if you ever get the chance go to McDonald's in Italy and ask for ketchup - it's 0,50€ per portion, but the taste is completely different than anywhere in Europe.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  Ah Italy, they somehow handle anything tomato-related differently, and I mean better. Currently baking alive on vacation in Sicily, tomatoes from basic stores taste much better than regular ones I can buy in Switzerland, any time of the year. When they do pasta with red sauce its something I want to pack and take home with us and just clone forever. I mean obviously their home made pasta al dente is superb, but those extra more-red-than-red sauces are also on another level. Country seems a bit broken and drivers dont seem to recognize basic traffic rules, but food is up there, pretty consistently.

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mcv 4y ago

> The first recorded recipe for a home-fermented tomato catsup was published in 1810, a descendant of British imitations of Asian “cat-sup,” or fermented fish sauce, that the British encountered on colonial voyages. Do they mean kecap? Does this mean the similarity in name between ketchup and kecap is not a coincidence, but ketchup really started out as an imitation of the other. Must have been a hell of a journey, because today they are absolutely nothing alike.

busymom0 4y ago
This video goes over the history of ketchup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWlqxGQXZx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWlqxGQXZx8

red_admiral 4y ago

Interesting read, but 'extinct' is a strong word - here in the UK, most supermarkets sell their own brand of ketchup alongside Heinz one, but slightly cheaper. With the cost of living crisis, I would expect them to gain in market share soon. (There are also "artisan" ketchups, but they're a very niche product.)

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WalterBright 4y ago

Extinct? Amazon lists lots of different ketchups.

pleb_nz 4y ago

Give me a hot sauce over ketchup or tomato sauce any day. Sour, salty, chilli flavours and a good hit of heat.

HisNameIsTor 4y ago

[in the USA] Here in Sweden, the most popular brand isn't Heinz, but Felix. https://www.felix.se/app/uploads/sites/33/2022/03/220209_Felix_Range-Ketchup_1200x750px-1200x750.jpg https://www.felix.se/app/uploads/sites/33/2022/03/220209_Fel...

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ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Really? The Austrian Ketchup brand? Ha, I though that's just in Austria.
- dagw 4y ago
  Probably a different Felix. The Swedish Felix was started in and is based in Sweden. Although it's currently owned by a Norwegian conglomerate. edit: Felix Austria is a daughter company of Felix Sweden, founded by the same Mr Felix a couple of decades later.
  - checkyoursudo 4y ago
    Looking at the felix.se and felix.at websites, it seems that probably Felix Austria was created in 1958 to serve the Austrian market. The Swedish website says Herbert Felix (a Czech immigrant to Sweden) started making pickles in Sweden in 1939. They use basically the same logo, and they are both owned by Orkla, so I suspect that Felix AT was a spin-off at some point to serve the Austrian market specifically.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    Nope, apparently it's the same Czech/Austrian Herbert Felix who founded the brand in Sweden then brought it to Austria[1]. Now I'm itching to try the Swedish Felix and see how it compares to the Austrian one. Also TIL that: "Sweden has the world's highest consumption of tomato ketchup, and Felix is by far the biggest brand, almost twice as big as its nearest competitor." Why do Swedes eat so much ketchup?! [1] https://www.orkla.se/brands/felix/ https://www.orkla.se/brands/felix/

rawoke083600 4y ago

In South Africa, the most popular brand is "All Gold Tomato Sauce", to be fair I can't reallly taste the difference, between a 'boerrie'[0] with heinz or all-gold. [0] South African word for a "hot-dog" but the sausage is actually real meat sausage (boerewors), the sausage itself is kinda unique and amazing as well.

bambax 4y ago

> A few years later, after a woman in Pennsylvania sent Heinz a dozen bottles of her homemade, tastier, better-looking, benzoate-free ketchup, they adopted her recipe, which was also sweet, vinegary, and thick. So the person responsible for the taste of ketchup, a woman, is barely alluded to, and not even named? I don't think of myself as a feminist, but this is pushing it.

fxtentacle 4y ago
It's a quote from "Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment" by Andrew F. Smith, who appears to be the only source I could find for this claim.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  The book cites the following as a reference: "Testimony of Sebastian Mueller, Curtice Brothers v. Harry E. Barnard et al., in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, 4:2989-995; Testimony of G. F. Mason, Curtice Brothers v. Harry E. Barnard et al., in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, 4:2966, in the National Archives-Great Lakes Region, Chicago" A quick search on "Curtice Brothers v. Harry E. Barnard" only refers back to the book. Didn't care to look beyond that to see if the case is online.
  - mminer237 4y ago
    The case itself is on Westlaw at least, but the opinion doesn't mention Heinz at all. PACER only goes back to 1989, so I suspect you'd have to actually go to Chicago in person to read the testimony.
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    The opinion for this case appears to be accessible here: https://cite.case.law/f/209/589/ https://cite.case.law/f/209/589/ (it's 209 F. 589, for anyone who knows how to turn that cite into a usable opinion). From scanning the opinion, it looks like the book cite is referring to testimony before a special master, probably convened to look into the factual matter of whether or not benzoate is a harmful chemical.

xani_ 4y ago

I'm still disappointed we can't readily buy a pizza sauce in ketchup bottle form

IshKebab 4y ago

There are some other ketchups on the market. Stoke's ketchup is available in supermarkets and is delicious and expensive and they have a few different flavours. Very interesting article anyway!

cafard 4y ago

Not quite twenty years ago, we happened to look into an old book of handwritten recipes belonging to my mother-in-law. On Labor Day weekend, we bought a big box of "seconds" tomatoes from a local farm stand, and spent the weekend cooking them down and making ketchup. We did the same the next summer; then we bought a fixer-upper house, and for some years had no lazy long weekends. It was good ketchup, though our son (mid-teens) preferred the store-bought product. All it takes is time, which I suspect is at something of a premium among the HN crowd.

kleiba 4y ago

Also an interesting read: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/15/346794301/language-of-food-reveals-mysteries-of-menu-words-and-ketchup https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/15/346794301/la...

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago

Pfft. You don't know about: (·)https://www.hela.eu/en/hela-at-home/products/product-finder/product-settings/Product/show/product-uid/spice-ketchup-curry-extra-hot-800-ml/ https://www.hela.eu/en/hela-at-home/products/product-finder/...

dzhiurgis 4y ago

No idea why (might be crunchy palette) but in New Zealand it’s near impossible to find ketchup in shelves. I’d say 95% if not more of supermarket is all tomato sauce, no ketchup in sight.

gavindean90 4y ago

It’s incredible to think that since the homemade catsups were home fermented they were rich in probiotics and digestive enzymes and naturally safe from food related pathogens. They were replaced with a product that, while safe is produced correctly, is more vulnerable to pathogens that are very deadly (c. botulinum). It really seems like a huge loss for public health.

alexalx666 4y ago

you can make a ketchup from scratch pretty easily (if you already use some of the ingredients in your meal it wont add much to your cooking time): 1) put cut tomatoes in a small-mid sized bowl (add tomato paste if you want it more thick) 2) add salt/pepper 3) add vinegar (choose accord to taste u want) 4) blend it or smash it