The Man Who Guards America's Ketchup | Hacker News Reader

The Man Who Guards America's Ketchup

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If you're seriously interested in the magic of Heinz Ketchup, this New Yorker longread by Malcolm Gladwell from 2004 remains the benchmark-

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-co...

Only slightly related to that but if you enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's piece you may also be interested in this episode from his excellent Revisionist History podcast where he tracks down why the fries at McDonalds don't taste the same any more:

http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke-my...

Thank you for this link -- it was an absolutely revelatory read for me in terms of sales and marketing, and also as to why Heinz is as satisfying as it is.

That story reminds me, I once made my own ketchup. It's a lot of fun, but not very rewarding (see below).

You'll find many different recipes on the net. I chose one of them that I considered most promising, assembled the definitely countless ingredients, then carefully peeled and boiled down the tomatoes, and so on. The whole process took me about two hours, maybe even longer. Before you add the vinegar, it tastes like a delicious Indian tomato sauce.

The result after adding the vinegar tasted like the cheapest, generic no-name ketchup you could find. It wasn't particularly bad, just not nearly as good as Heinz. Whatever they put in their ketchup, it sure is some secret sauce.

It is easy to make tomato sauce without any ketchup (like in spaghetti with tomato sauce); To me it tastes much better than ketchup, but I wouldn't know how to preserve it for a week or longer.

I mean ketchup kills all the ingredients but it doesn't turn into a tasteless mess; that's quite an achievement.

what

> It is easy to make tomato sauce without any ketchup

What do you mean? Tomato sauce is not ketchup, it's a completely different thing. Is there people actually making tomato sauce with ketchup!?

> Tomato sauce is not ketchup, it's a completely different thing.

Really? I've always assumed that ketchup is just what Americans call tomato sauce.

No.

Tomato jam would be better description, though that’s also a whole other condiment which is apparently pretty popular in South Africa. We don’t typically serve our pasta with ketchup[1].

[1] The Japanese however, might. https://www.japanesecooking101.com/spaghetti-neapolitan/

I’ve tasted variants of this. It isn’t for me, but I never cared for ketchup.

Fun fact: Japanese Naporitan pasta (basically spaghetti with ketchup) originates from US military rations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naporitan

The Japanese can only blame themselves for the ketchup-flavored popsicles though:

https://soranews24.com/2014/03/27/we-drink-japans-spaghetti-...

Ketchup is a sauce with tomatoes in, but it generally includes vinegar, salt and quite a lot of sugar; tends to have a consistent, lump-free texture; it's applied to greasy food like fries and hamburgers; and only about one tablespoon would be used per meal.

On the other hand, a pasta sauce would generally retain chunks of tomato, use less (or even no) vinegar, salt or sugar per unit volume; and it would be applied to non-greasy pasta in much larger volumes :)

> Ketchup is a sauce with tomatoes in, but it generally includes vinegar, salt and quite a lot of sugar; tends to have a consistent, lump-free texture; it's applied to greasy food like fries and hamburgers; and only about one tablespoon would be used per meal.

What you've described is just called tomato sauce in my part of the world (Pacific Islands, Australia, New Zealand). So what we call tomato sauce, you call ketchup.

EDIT: I found this https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/heinz-ketchup-australi...

So what we call tomato sauce, you call ketchup.

Interesting. Do you have a different word for the tomato based sauce made from fresh or canned tomatoes often used on pizzas and pasta?

Pizza sauce (or possibly tomato paste), and pasta sauce, respectively.

Tomato Sauce and Ketchup aren't quite the same thing here - ketchup is probably stronger and thicker, but they are used the same way.

We do tomato paste and tomato puree. Typically use the paste for a pizza base, and if you're making your own pasta sauce, tomato puree with a dollop of paste to up the tomatoeness.

Ketchup tastes like it has more vinegar in it than tomato sauce, but that's a highly subjective Kiwi opinion.

Incidentally, the best tomato sauce is whatever magical sauce they use on the hot-dogs at A&P shows.

> Ketchup is a sauce with tomatoes in

Historically, ketchup was a class of condiments that all had a lot of umami like fish sauces and oyster sauces. Over time, different ketchups were invented, one of which was tomato ketchup. Its popularity grew, and the other ketchups were forgotten, so these days ketchup is synonymous with tomato ketchup.

Are you Australian?

For the confused people in the audience: There is a product, in Australia, much like ketchup, marketed as “tomato sauce”. Yes, people make pasta sauce with it. Yes, pasta sauce made from scratch is better. It’s not so dissimilar from ketchup, just a little less vinegary.

British rarely refer to ketchup as ketchup, we almost exclusively refer to it as "tomato sauce".

I'm British, and I refer to ketchup as ketchup. This may be regional; I'm southern-English. I'd probably by default assume that if you said 'tomato sauce' you meant a generic tomato-based sauce, not the specific condiment Heinz &c make.

Also southern English, and this matches my understanding of the terminology. But yes, I believe usage does vary regionally.

or even worse, "Red Sauce"

Yeah, you hear that a lot in "greasy spoon" establishments, perhaps because there isn't enough tomato in the recipe to claim it as such?

I'm British and I've only ever experienced people calling it ketchup

I’m British, from the South East, and it was tomato sauce in my family when I was a kid, but now it is ketchup. There was a transition at some point fairly recently. English evolves easily.

I think you've nailed it. I'm was Essex/Kent born and raised, with East End of London heritage. It was always "tomato sauce", was very rare to hear it referred to as "ketchup".

> Yes, people make pasta sauce with it.

With tomato sauce? Really?

Yeah I don't think I've ever heard of that in Australia.

I know about ketchup and 'tomato sauce' as being essentially the same condiment, used on a hot dog or what have you.

I've never heard of someone using actual ketchup/tomato sauce condiment as a pasta sauce. Literal spaghetti and sauce (that we all ate as kids, don't deny it) from a can would taste better.

Apparently it's a thing here in Thailand, but given how most Thai places in western countries treat Thai food, Im not sure I have much place to tell them they're doing it wrong.

Is there people actually making tomato sauce with ketchup!?

I've seen several recipes for tomato based sauces that use ketchup as an ingredient if that's what you mean. But it's used a flavoring ingredient, not as the bulk of the sauce.

> Tomato sauce is not ketchup

Regionally, people where I live call ketchup 'tomato sauce', or sometimes 'red sauce'.

Only one vital difference. Ketchup's tomato density is much greater that tomato sauce. In other words it's just a matter of intensity of flavor, thickness and consistency, all of which follow when the sauce is concentrated though it depends what flavor you want for either. No other magical characteristic required.

Vinegar and sugar are the two other vital components of tomato ketchup, with vinegar probably being the more characteristic of the two. (Tomatoes are naturally somewhat sweet, so you are always going to have some sweetness in your tomato sauce as a flavor component.)

Both are either used not at all in tomato sauce or used in much, much lower doses. (I actually have sometimes used very low doses of balsamic vinegar in my tomato sauces but it’s an atypical ingredient. Sometimes adding carrots, honey or just a bit of sugar is recommended if your tomatoes are particularly sour and lacking in sweetness but that’s more as a workaround to hide not so tasty tomatoes. I have also done that in the past but we are talking about adding a pinch of sugar or a drop of honey, not having sugar as the third entry on your ingredients list.)

Obviously, the texture of ketchup is also very smooth while tomato sauce can have many different textures, from completely smooth like ketchup to with substantial vegetable chunks. Depending on how long you cook the sauce those chunks will also be more or less soft. Also, tomato sauce can and probably often is much less thick than tomato ketchup and tomato sauce often has quite a bit of added fat (typically butter or olive oil or both).

Ketchup is also typically served cold and tomato sauce hot but that’s more like the default. Both can go either way.

So, yeah, I would say there are a lot of substantial differences between tomato ketchup and tomato sauce beyond just how concentrated the tomatoes are.

But maybe we are talking past each other and what you call “tomato sauce” is actually something else entirely.

Sometimes it just needs carefully sussing out the secret ingredient.

My wife has been trying to make green curry for years, but it was never as good as the Thai stuff. Then she followed the advice of a professional chef to not replace the kaffir limes by just any limes and actually try to obtain kaffir limes (which are bitter and not useful except for their peel). Boom! Her green curry is now as good as any in Thailand. Just changing the limes made a world of difference.

Did she attempt to dose cardamom? Did she use Thai basil? I'm not sure about the former in Thai cuisine, but the latter is highly recommended.

As for ketchup, it simply isn't spicy enough for my taste. Which makes it "boring". There's a Dutch variant called "curry" which contains spices and umami, but more sugar and less tomatoes.

Mayonnaise I desire with lemon, too (Belgian style). I like to make my own garlic sauce (Belgian mayonnaise, yogurt, cube-sliced garlic). Don't make it _too_ runny (too much yogurt). My fav sauce is green pepper sauce. It is similar to the garlic sauce as base, but with freshly grinded green pepper. I'll try a black pepper variant another time.

Have you tried brown sauce?

http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/brownsauce.htm

Yes, I have! You may regard it as similar, but not quite the same. The thing with "curry" (Dutch one ie. the sauce, not the -real- Asian one) is that different brands are not quite the same. If you focus on it, you'll notice.

I also find that the older I become, the less desire I have for sugar. I dislike if things are too sweet for my taste. Hence I no longer prefer (Dutch) curry as sauce, and also a reason why I love yogurt with mayonnaise as a simple basis for sauces. In that sense, German cream and German mayonnaise is also lovely as it contains far less sugar but has the same mouth feeling. In apfelstrudel mit Sahne, the cream compliments the sweet pastry.

Yes, we learned the difference between Thai basil and regular basil in Thailand, which was before she started attempting to make her own curry :).

I'm not sure if there's cardamom in the curry, but it's definitely in the cupboard (both powdered and whole cardamom pods), so if it should be there, I expect it is.

Could you pretty please share the recipe? And especially if you also happen to have recipes for red, panang, or massaman curries?

Sugar?

I don't think so (well, not entirely so anyway).

I had switched to "50% less sugar & salt" [0] some months ago, and more recently discovered the "no added sugar & salt" [1] version and use this one since then. Sure it's not exactly the same taste as "regular" heinz ketchup but I'd say it's close enough.

[0]: https://www.heinz.co.uk/products/tomato_ketchup/products/hei... [1]: https://www.heinz.co.uk/products/tomato_ketchup/products/tom...

Uh, regarding your second link to the sugar-free version, how can Heinz claim it's using "No artificial colours, flavors, preservatives or thickeners" when the product is sweetened with Sucralose?

Wikipedia's text about Sucralose [1] starts:

Sucralose is an artificial sweetener and sugar substitute [...]

Is "sweet" not considered a flavor, due to some marketing double-speak?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose

Technically, I guess "sweet" is a taste, i.e. felt on the tongue, whereas flavors are smells...

Perhaps (I'm not a native speaker) but that doesn't mesh with my understanding of the word.

Wikipedia's entry on Flavor [1] says:

A "flavorant" is defined as a substance that gives another substance flavor, altering the characteristics of the solute, causing it to become sweet, sour, tangy, etc. A flavor is a quality of something that affects the sense of taste.

So they claim that "sweet" is a flavor, which to me makes it obvious that Sucralose, being a sweetener, is acting as flavoring.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor

I agree using the common definitions sweeteners could be called flavors. However the FDA has only approved sucralose as a non-nutritive sweetener which for regulatory purposes is a different category of ingredient than artificial flavors.

Approved artificial flavors: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFR...

Approved artificial sweeteners: https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/additional...

(disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, I just have too much time on my hands). It seems that the EU regulations distinguish between additives, enzymes, and flavourings, and that sweeteners fall under additives.

Regulation on additives includes sweeteners alongside colours, emulsifiers, etc: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...

Regulation on flavourings excludes sweeteners: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32... (2. This Regulation shall not apply to: (a) substances which have exclusively a sweet, sour or salty taste;)

I've never made from pure scratch like that - but a few times when we've been out of sauce I've made some with tomato paste, balsamic vinegar and sugar/salt - always tasted amazing.

But creating my own paste would feel like a very long winded way of going about the process - esp if as you suggest it really isn't worth it.

I spent a few years working as a cook, from crappy catering companies all the way up to a michelin-starred restaurant. At every level, it was a known "rule" that one thing you should never attempt to make in house was...ketchup.

I had a friend that worked for Jean-George in new york and brought their steak sauce with him to the restaurant we were working at. I swear to god, we had to order all these specialty fucking ingredients and dump a ton of labor into this one condiment and then people would just ask for A1 (or Ketchup).

Some things just aren't worth the effort.

for a little extra kick, i like the ones that include a little cayenne pepper

Huntz is a vastly superior product, for a similar (or cheaper) price.

Give it a shot!

edit: I made the switch a couple years back, when Huntz switched back to sugar (from corn syrup) and haven't looked back. AFAIK, Heinz still uses the high fructose rubbish.

Kinda silly that we still can't make an objective measurement of taste, like we can for images, sound.

But we can. What we can't make is an objective measurement of whether something tastes good - much like we can't make a similar objective measurement for whether an image looks good, or a music piece sounds good.

The question in the article was about whether the taste of ketchup has changed over time. Now, can we measure the taste of something, record it, and compare it meaningfully to a new measurement? If there is a difference between both measurements, can we say if that difference is significant or not (i.e. would a human be able to tell the difference)?

Oh but we can - chemical composition, acidity, caloric content, etcetera.

But think of it this way; can you make an objective measurement about music or (visual) art? Can you encode someone's reaction to an image in a repeatable, digital form?

Perhaps because at root, its a subjective measure. What did you eat beforehand? What is your level of exhertion? Hydration? What do your genes do to the enzymes in your mouth? What did you grow up/get acclimated to already?

Just look around the world, at the crazy things other cultures eat. Of course taste is subjective! Or genetic; either way, its gonna be hard to be objective in a meaningful way.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866663

It kind of bothers me that in that picture of the farm the hills behind it look like a desert.

Welcome to California!

It's dry grass - you see hills like that in many parts of California. Some of my wife's relatives visiting from Poland had the same interpretation you did.

That's the magic of irrigation. Farms can be located in dry areas, which is common in much of California, where it doesn't rain from May to October.

I remember the first time I went to a place with green grass in summer and being amazed that such a thing was possible.

Used to be made of oysters and walnuts. If we didn't allow it to change with public tastes, we'd still be putting that on our hamburgers?

In the U.S. salsa has partly replaced katchup as a tomato condiment. I use it myself because I have to watch my weight and sugar intake.

oops, make that "ketchup"

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