FOOD
WHAT TO EAT. WHAT NOT TO EAT.
MAY 30 2012 6:15 AM
The Cosmopolitan Condiment
An exploration of ketchup’s Chinese origins.
By Dan Jurafsky
Heinz ketchup.
Modern ketchup has its roots in—you guessed it—Chinese fish sauce
Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Fast food is America’s signature export, and one of its most pervasive: Every day another few outlets open in Europe or Asia, spreading the distinctively American diet to the world. It’s ironic, then, that hamburgers, french fries, and ketchup are not even originally ours, a fact that is clear from what we call them. The large German contribution to American cuisine is obvious in words like hamburger, frankfurter, and pretzel, while french fries make their Franco-Belgian origins plain. And, of course, ketchup is Chinese.
Yes, dear reader, the word ketchup originally meant “fish sauce” in a dialect of Fujian province, the humid coastal region that also gave us the word “tea” (from Fujianese te). As it happens, Fujianese immigration to the United States has increased in recent years, so you can now sample Fujianese dishes in Chinatowns up and down the East Coast, paired with the homemade red rice wine that is a specialty of the province. The history of this red rice wine is intertwined with that of ketchup—but while the wine has stayed largely the same over the centuries, ketchup has undergone quite a transformation.
.........
