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#102150 05/05/03 03:56 PM
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I had another thought about tomato sauce this weekend. Isn't it the British word for what North Americans call ketchup? Could someone please confirm or deny this? If I ever saw anyone putting ketchup on pasta I'd probably cry.


#102151 05/05/03 07:54 PM
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More or less. If I see someone wasting good tomato sauce on pasta, that makes me wanna cry, too ...


#102152 05/06/03 01:04 AM
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The word ketchup is also used in Britain. Not in this part of the world, though. Ketchup comes from the Malay/Indonesian kecap, meaning soy sauce.

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#102153 05/06/03 01:30 AM
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I had a thought about dead horse. Maybe it's a reference to the mystery meat in the canned pasta sauce


#102154 05/06/03 06:59 AM
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I had another thought about tomato sauce this weekend. Isn't it the British word for what North Americans call ketchup? Could someone please confirm or deny this? ~ Bean

Here's a question from me and an answer from Helen from some time back.

When I was a lot younger, in the UK one served up tomato sauce with one’s fish and chips. On the other side of the Atlantic something called “ketchup” (occasionally for some mysterious reason spelled: “catsup”) was applied to hotdogs. Now, in the UK, one is also liable to hear the word ketchup used rather than tomato sauce.
I don’t like tomato sauce so cannot be sure whether it is the same as ketchup or something different, but it is clear why tomato sauce is so called. Can anyone please enlighten me as to where the word ketchup came from, and the even more mysterious catsup?

dxb

what ever the sourse of the word, catsup/ketchup has been an American condiment for a very long time.. colonial cookbooks have recipts.(recipes) for it, and the basics haven't changed.. it was originally chunkier, more like a chutney, made from tomatoes, spice, vinegar and sweetner.(molasses originaly) over time, it got smoother and sweeter.. until it is the homogonized sweet, mildy spicey, tomato basic condiment we know today.

remember the whaling industry was growing up pre-revolution, and american sailers were going round the world in search of whales.. NYC had the first customs house of US government, Sag Harbor, New Bedford, Nantucket, and all the other whaling towns of New England/Long Island followed fast behind.. Whaling ships brought in whale oil and other exotics from many foriegn ports and the new goverment was quick to impose duty tax! but there was no tax on ideas.. and condiments like ketchup came in free!

to my thinking tomato sause is mild, (maybe salt, and little basil) pureed tomatoes.. reduced slightly to thicken. it is the basis of other sauses.. red (pasta sause), cocktail sause for sea food, tomato soup, etc. i almost never use it as it comes from the can, but only use it as an ingredient in something else.



#102155 05/06/03 02:42 PM
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Recently, Heinz (he of the famous 57 Varieties©of pickles) and also the premiere catsup/ketchup purveyor in US, came out with a green catsup! Tastes same as red and kids loved it .... a Seussean thing doncha'know.



#102156 05/06/03 04:20 PM
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sorry wow, green ketchup is old hat-- it came out last year.. this year new ketchup color is purple..

(did you hear the one about the family of tomatos out taking a walk? the little one was constantly getting distracted, and falling behind..

Father tomato kept instructing him to keep up with the family, but time and time again, the baby is trailing far behind the rest of the family. Finaly, he loses his temper, strides back a ways to were the dawdling baby tomato is, and smacks him up side the head! the baby crashes into a wall, and is smushed!
the father tomato surveys his work and says, "Ketchup!")


#102157 05/07/03 02:00 AM
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A translation of the entry in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia for kecap (bearing in mind that c in Indonesian is pronounced with a ch sound):

kecap: n 1. liquid or sauce produced from processed soya beans to which sugar and spices are added and used as a food flavouring. 2. bragging, empty talk.

The dictionary doesn't give etymologies, but presumably it's related to the previous entry for another word kecap, which is longer than I feel like typing, but the basic meaning is: movement of the mouth (opening and closing it tightly) such as when eating so as to give rise to the sound cap,cap. As a verb (mengecap), it means to smack the lips, or to taste food.

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