Catsup [Ketchup] History

Title:
Catsup [Ketchup] History

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1 Info file

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 KETCHUP: Also catchup, Catsup. A condiment consisting of a thick,


 smooth-textured, spicy sauce usually made from tomatoes.[Probably Malay


 kechap, fish sauce possibly from Chinese (Cantonese) ke-tsiap]


 


 Notes: The word ketchup exemplifies the types of modifications that can


 take place in the borrowing process, both in the borrowing of a word and in


 the borrowing of a substance. The source of our word ketchup may be the


 Malay word kechap, possibly taken into Malay from the Cantonese dialect of


 Chinese. Kechap, like our word, referred to a kind of sauce, but a sauce


 without tomatoes; rather, it contained fish brine, herbs, and spices. The


 sauce seems to have emigrated to Europe by way of sailors, where it was


 made with locally available ingredients such as the juice of mushrooms or


 walnuts. At some point, when the juice of tomatoes was first used, ketchup


 as we know it was born. However, it is important to realize that in the


 18th and 19th centuries ketchup was a generic term for sauces whose only


 common ingredient was vinegar. The word is first recorded in English in


 1690 in the form catchup, in 1711 in the form ketchup, and in 1730 in the


 form catsup. These three spelling variants of a foreign borrowing remain


 current.


 


 Source: American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition 1992 MM by Dorothy


 Flatman 1997 From: Dorothy Flatman Date: 06 Mar 97


 


 Posted to MM-Recipes Digest V4 #146 by BobbieB1@aol.com on May 25, 1997