Here's how Tomato ketchup evolved!

Ketchup is so American; it is the red in red, white, and blue, right? And that red clearly is from the tomatoes the ketchup is made from. Nevertheless, that was not always the case. The first recorded recipe for ketchup comes from China. Moreover, for more than a thousand years it was not even made with tomatoes. It was made with fish guts. Eww!

Fish intestines, bladder, and stomach all mixed together with salt, then sealed and heated in the hot summer sun for 20 days. That was the original ketchup. A fermented fish paste that dates back to 6th century China. It was popular throughout Southeast Asia and British and Dutch settlers who arrived in the 1600s loved the stuff.

Over time, they brought ketchup home to Europe and added their own modifications including beer, mushrooms, walnuts, oysters, strawberries, and peaches. By the mid-1700s, English ketchup was a mainstay on British dinner tables and as colonists went west, it soon made its way across the pond. That is where tomatoes come in. They are native to the Americas. In addition, it has rumored Europeans once believed they were poisonous but poisonous, they were not. In 1812, a Philadelphia horticulturist and scientist by the name of James Mease introduced tomatoes into the mix.  He published a tomato ketchup recipe that was the beginning of a new crimson era.

From there, many different iterations were concocted and by the end of the 18th century, The New York Tribune called tomato ketchup America's national condiment that was on every table in the land. Which brings us back to this. Tomato ketchup is here to stay. In addition, I, for one, do not miss the fish guts.