[HN Gopher] When every ketchup but one went extinct (2022)
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When every ketchup but one went extinct (2022)
Author : AaronM
Score : 72 points
Date : 2024-02-12 13:38 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| xav0989 wrote:
| I wonder what additives are currently in good that we'll discover
| to be harmful in the future.
|
| Also interesting that Heinz's ketchup (in be the US) is now full
| of high fructose corn syrup and artificial food dyes, when (from
| the article) it started as the better/safer/more natural option.
| frogulis wrote:
| Is that so? As an Aussie, Heinz is not a new brand for me, but
| I definitely associate them with beans before ketchup (tomato
| sauce (dead horse in rhyming slang)). Canned baked beans are
| not thought of as a natural nor healthy option - is that the
| perception of Heinz as a company in NA, or is it just the
| ketchup product that's thought of as better/safer/more natural?
| keiferski wrote:
| Your comment reminded me of the Mad Men story arc (set in the
| 60s) which is about Heinz being associated with beans, not
| ketchup.
|
| In the US, today I'd say Heinz is almost overwhelmingly
| associated with ketchup, so it's interesting that their ad
| efforts didn't make it to Oz.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDiCW6wlFBc
| frogulis wrote:
| These days they may have a better association with
| "ketchup". My sister affirms that (Heinz) ketchup and
| tomato sauce are distinct products, but I'm not so sure.
| jraph wrote:
| For me, a ketchup is tomato puree / paste + suger + salt
| + some vinegar + possibly some seasoning (pepper,
| herbs...). Tomato sauces is a larger category of any kind
| of tomato based sauce in which we could shoehorn ketchup.
| A tomato sauce could be purely salted and without any
| sugar in it, though a pinch of sugar can mitigate the
| acidic taste.
| arethuza wrote:
| "Beanz Meanz Heinz" is etched into my memory from my youth
| in the UK.
|
| Certainly when I think of Heinz I think of beans not
| ketchup.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Huh - they once ran ads for ketchup that said something
| like:
|
| "Heinz, there are no other Kinds":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JplL1XzVV4
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| I've bought Heinz Beans at a grocery store in Austin.
|
| In the import section.
|
| And they weren't bad, but not great either.
| nkrisc wrote:
| As an American, I had to do a terrible impression of an
| Aussie accent to hear how "sauce" and "horse" could possibly
| rhyme.
|
| As for Heinz, my impression has always been that it's the
| standard, mass-produced supermarket fare that is probably not
| healthy/natural. Nothing they make that much of that lasts
| for so long can possibly be so.
| frogulis wrote:
| They rhyme perfectly in an Australian accent :D
|
| Not rhotic, plus the vowel in "sauce" tends towards "or"
| rather than "ah". Hope that's a comprehensible explanation
| of our esoteric pronunciation :)
| dragontamer wrote:
| The science of long lasting food is well known.
|
| Boiling kills most bacteria. Acid kills the leftover
| Botulism spores (one of the few diseases that survive
| boiling). Seal while hot and the food can stay good for a
| year or longer.
|
| Tomatoes already are near the acid point that kills
| botulism. Just gotta lower pH a little more with either
| lemons or vinegar. And bam, success.
|
| A professional would need to measure the pH to be sure as
| acidity levels differ. But we've been canning tomatoes for
| nearly two centuries now, the science is well tested and
| well figured out.
|
| > Nothing they make that much of that lasts for so long can
| possibly be so.
|
| Refrigeration was invented long after preserved foods. You
| couldn't match a Roman Legion 500 miles without
| preservatives.
|
| Salt, olive oil and wheat. It must have sucked to be a
| Roman Legion but less so than other troops.
|
| It's why 1lb of salt was worth 1lb of gold back then. The
| secrets of long lasting food (fermentation, salt, and other
| methods) is millennia old. Canning is relatively new
| (boiling+sealing simultaneously), a 1800s era discovery.
| But canning's health effects are well studied.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Do you mean salt was worth as much as gold, literally?
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Do you mean salt was worth as much as gold, literally?
|
| EDIT: Deleted my previous comment.
|
| EDIT: I seem to have gotten the story backwards. It was
| West-Africa who needed the salt, but they had so many
| gold-mines that Gold was near worthless. Woops!!
|
| So any European who brought salt past the Sahara Desert
| could trade 1-lb of salt for 1-lb of gold.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| This is 100% BS. It probably comes from the same myth
| that in ancient times, people were paid in salt, since it
| was sooooo valueable, and ergo, salary.
| eru wrote:
| That's at best a common myth, but was never literally
| true.
|
| However salt was more expensive than today. But measured
| in eg hours of the average person had to work for to
| afford something, almost everything is cheaper today than
| almost any time in the past. Especially goods. (Services
| or land, not so much.)
| eru wrote:
| > As an American, I had to do a terrible impression of an
| Aussie accent to hear how "sauce" and "horse" could
| possibly rhyme.
|
| I guess it help to start with a non-rhotic accent.
|
| Going off on a tangent: I was very confused when one Calvin
| and Hobbes comic rhyme 'macabre' with 'job'; I figured out
| later that it's because American accents are weird.
| pests wrote:
| I feel like its similar to "source" being turned into
| "sauce".
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| Heinz do different kinds of Ketchup, the no added salt one
| tastes just like regular european heinz ketchup (i.e. not as
| cloyingly sweet). I remember the ingredients didn't have HFCS
| listed on the bottle and we put it down to that being the
| difference.
| xav0989 wrote:
| Heinz US also does a "simply" ketchup with sugar instead of
| HGCS and no artificial dyes, and when you compare ingredient
| lists, that same "specialty" ketchup is the one that's sold
| as regular ketchup in Canada.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Not adding salt makes it less sweet? Or is there some more
| differences?
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| I don't recall exactly but the ingredients lists were
| pretty different. The no salt one had tomatoes and maybe 2
| or 3 other ingredients, the regular one had a few more
| ingredients although as i recall nothing weird except HFCS
| was one item.
| code_duck wrote:
| Food coloring would be news to me. I haven't seen that in any
| ingredient lists... looking at Heinz's website now, it does not
| list any dyes in the ingredients for their standard ketchup.
| rsynnott wrote:
| So, the odd thing here is that, while, yes, most preservatives
| used in the early 20th century were extremely dodgy, sodium
| benzoate, while controlled, remains legal, and considered safe
| at reasonable levels. This was as much marketing as anything,
| in this particular case.
| derbOac wrote:
| Interestingly, I was listening to a podcast once and they were
| interviewing a researcher with Heinz who said one of their R&D
| goals is developing tomato varieties that are sweet enough to
| be used in making ketchup without added sugar. I don't remember
| what podcast it was and don't know if Heinz is still doing that
| but at the time they sounded like it was a big focus for them,
| for financial as well as health reasons.
|
| Gastropod has a good episode on ketchup; it might have been the
| one I'm thinking of but it might not. It covers many of the
| same things as this article but in more depth with certain
| things.
| infecto wrote:
| > _Also interesting that Heinz's ketchup (in be the US) is now
| full of high fructose corn syrup and artificial food dyes, when
| (from the article) it started as the better /safer/more natural
| option_
|
| Amazing the leaps you took to make this statement. 1) There are
| no food dyes that I am aware of. 2) I don't think the science
| is conclusive that HFCS is any worse than sugar. 3) They make
| many varieties, some which use cane sugar instead of HFCS. 4)
| What does this have anything to to with the US?
| pfdietz wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649104/ (2013)
|
| > Both controversy and confusion exist concerning fructose,
| sucrose, and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) with respect to
| their metabolism and health effects. These concerns have
| often been fueled by speculation based on limited data or
| animal studies. In retrospect, recent controversies arose
| when a scientific commentary was published suggesting a
| possible unique link between HFCS consumption and obesity.
| Since then, a broad scientific consensus has emerged that
| there are no metabolic or endocrine response differences
| between HFCS and sucrose related to obesity or any other
| adverse health outcome. This equivalence is not surprising
| given that both of these sugars contain approximately equal
| amounts of fructose and glucose, contain the same number of
| calories, possess the same level of sweetness, and are
| absorbed identically through the gastrointestinal tract.
| [...]
| infecto wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9551185/
| (2022)
|
| > In conclusion, analysis of data from the literature
| suggests that HFCS consumption was associated with a higher
| level of CRP compared to sucrose, whilst no significant
| changes between the two sweeteners were evident in other
| anthropometric and metabolic parameters
|
| We could go back and forth all day long posting studies
| from nih.gov, lets not be silly. I don't think what you
| have provided disproves my statement. The science is
| inconclusive, we don't know that HFCS is materially worse
| than sugar. I think we can say sugar in any form is not
| great in large quantities but I don't think we know for
| certain how worse, if any, HFCS is compared to natural
| sugar.
| biomcgary wrote:
| Profits drive use of HFCS because fructose is sweeter than
| glucose. A pinch of enzyme converts glucose to fructose and
| saves a bunch of money.
|
| Fructose interferes with glucose use and regulation. The real
| comparison to be made is between normal corn syrup (only
| glucose) and HFCS (about half fructose), not sugar (about
| half fructose).
|
| When using crude tools to evaluate metabolism like the
| glycemic index, which only considers blood glucose, it
| appears that fructose is better. The modern Western diet
| leads to obesity, diabetes, and fatty liver disease (NAFLD)
| because fructose metabolism collides with lipid metabolism in
| the liver.
| infecto wrote:
| This still does not really convince me that it is
| materially different at scale. I think what I said still
| holds true.
| rendang wrote:
| HFCS has about the same amount of fructose as its usual
| substitute, sucrose. I don't see very many products around
| me sweetened with pure glucose
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Heinz: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled
| Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Salt, Spice,
| Onion Powder, Natural Flavoring
|
| Heinz Simply: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Tomatoes,
| Distilled Vinegar, Cane Sugar, Salt, Onion Powder, Spice,
| Natural Flavoring
|
| Heinz No Sugar Added: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe
| Tomatoes, Distilled White Vinegar, Salt, Natural Flavoring,
| Stevia Leaf Extract (Not Normally Found in Ketchup), Onion
| Powder
|
| Heinz No Salt Added: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Tomatoes,
| Distilled White Vinegar, Sugar, Potassium Chloride (Not in
| Regular Ketchup), Natural Flavoring, Spice, Onion Powder
|
| Heinz Organic: Organic Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Organic
| Tomatoes, Organic Distilled Vinegar, Organic Sugar, Salt,
| Organic Onion Powder, Organic Spice, Natural Flavoring
|
| Heinz Jalapeno: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Tomatoes,
| Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Salt, Dried
| Jalapeno Peppers, Spice, Onion Powder, Natural Flavors, Bell
| Pepper Juice Concentrate
|
| There are probably others, those are the ones listed at one
| store.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Gums.
|
| Indigestible. Used in place of flour or corn starch as a
| thickener or emulsifier. They can be quite irritating to some
| people.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| "And because it [cat-sup] was fermented, it boasted a shelf life
| of one to seven years."
|
| does that really follow?
| frogulis wrote:
| I've heard of Indian dry mango pickles that are ~20 years old!
| I guess a product that is dominantly colonised by harmless
| bacteria is unlikely to be taken over by nasty things, unless
| it sports food that is tasty to harmful organisms and not
| friendly ones. Maybe the best defence is the dominant bacterium
| having eaten all the available sugars so that little further
| fermentation can occur (and the bottle won't explode)
| zabzonk wrote:
| > I guess a product that is dominantly colonised by harmless
| bacteria is unlikely to be taken over by nasty thing
|
| much like human skin, gut, etc.
| NikkiA wrote:
| When I was a kid, the pickles we bought would last 2-3 years
| in some cases - only typically being eaten at special meals
| like christmas, new years, easter, birthdays.
|
| These days I wouldn't trust a modern shop bought pickle to
| last more than a couple of months before they start to look
| like they're growing fungus.
|
| I don't know what changed, but something did, and commercial
| pickles these days do not stay safe to eat.
| tokai wrote:
| Yeah its one of the points of fermenting. Maybe even _the_
| point of fermentation.
|
| "Fermentation was primarily developed for the stabilization of
| perishable agricultural produce."
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/food-science/food-ferme...
| MilaM wrote:
| Yes! Fermentation of fresh foods with lactic acid bacteria
| increases the acidity of foods and hence the shelf life. As far
| as I know, though, you also have to add salt to suppress the
| growth of less desirable microorganisms.
|
| Edit: You can skip the fermanation step by pickling your
| vegetables with a suitable vinegar. The taste will be much
| different though.
| frogulis wrote:
| Yup, my understanding is that salt suppresses many bacteria,
| then the acid produced by lactobacteria (hopefully)
| suppresses botulism. Essential to ensure you have enough
| sugars to convert to acid! Test the pH in your ferments if
| you're giving them to friends!
| ljf wrote:
| Fermentation does a few things - it removes some of the excess
| sugars so other microbes don't have much to feed one, it
| changes the ph of the liquid so that again it is inhospitable
| to other microbes, and the mild alcohols can also inhibit other
| growths.
|
| Wines can taste great (better even!) after years of storage, I
| would have not problem eating a well ages fermented ketchup.
| Ringz wrote:
| It sounds like there is only Heinz ketchup in all supermarkets in
| the USA. Is that so?
|
| In Europe (at least Italy, Germany, Austria) there are many
| different types of ketchup and manufacturers in supermarkets.
| keiferski wrote:
| There are plenty of alternatives available, it's more that
| Heinz is just "the default."
| robolange wrote:
| Yes, and the alternatives are more or less identical to
| Heinz. The diversity of flavors and textures that this
| article talks about no longer exists.
| keiferski wrote:
| I don't think that's true at all, except for the most
| generic of grocery stores. Case in point:
| https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/search?text=ketchup
|
| There are also an innumerable amount of other sauces that
| include tomatoes and can be considered variants or ketchup-
| adjacent.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I find all ketchup that isn't Born Ketchup pretty much
| disgusting.
| Ennea wrote:
| I wasn't counting on finding anybody else who loves Born
| on HN, but here you are :)
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Has
| https://old.reddit.com/r/hela_gewuerzketchup/top/?sort=top&t...
| made it over there?
| Ringz wrote:
| In Berlin, Hela ketchup is called ,,Techno Ketchup".
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > only Heinz ketchup in all supermarkets in the USA
|
| I live in Chicago, we're lucky to have a single ketchup in the
| supermarket.
|
| (Around the 2:35 mark):
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=efG56KcQj0Q
| al_borland wrote:
| There are others, but they are generally seen as either budget
| options, or health food options.
|
| We are starting to see more companies enter the market with
| sugar free ketchups, for example.
|
| By me, Hunts is a common alternative to Heinz, but it seen as
| an option for people who buy on price, not taste.
|
| Recently, I have been trying some of the sugar free options,
| but always also have a bottle of Heinz on hand, because if
| anyone comes over to my house, they will be disappointed with
| anything else. If kids come over, they might not eat their meal
| if it's anything else.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Nobody I know gives a single thought to ketchup brands, Heinz
| or otherwise. Grab whatever is on the shelf, you'll have half a
| dozen choices. Never in my life have I heard that Heinz is
| better or higher quality. Just another brand.
|
| But hey I live in the Midwest. Maybe the Heinz ketchup
| marketing juggernaut passed us by.
| carols10cents wrote:
| Tell me you don't know anyone from Pittsburgh without telling
| me you don't know anyone from Pittsburgh.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| What is this childish meme of cute redundant commenting?
| Where does it come from?
|
| You have something to say here, say it. Plainly. Without
| the snark or superior attitude. Take that somewhere else;
| we won't miss it.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Hunts and Del Monte are the other national brands. Then you
| have a ton of store and locality (state/region) specific
| options, as well as healthier/quality alternatives.
|
| On a side note, American supermarkets being accused of having
| _less_ options is genuinely a first for me to hear. On average,
| especially for common goods like this, you 're looking at a
| 2-4x brand diversity in an American supermarket. That doesn't
| necessarily mean it's _better quality_ , but you're definitely
| going to see more options just due to the sheer relative size
| of American supermarkets.
| Ringz wrote:
| I'd like to clarify that I never "accused" American
| supermarkets of having less variety. In fact, my comment was
| aimed at expressing surprise at hearing such an accusation
| for the first time. Furthermore, I honestly don't necessarily
| find the 2-4 times brand diversity in American supermarkets
| to be particularly diverse, especially when comparing it to,
| for example, German supermarkets. Additionally, the size of a
| market does not imply "more brands" but usually means more
| space for the same brands, which doesn't necessarily equate
| to a greater variety.
|
| But I honestly think U.S.S.upermarkets are great!
| deaddodo wrote:
| > Additionally, the size of a market does not imply "more
| brands" but usually means more space for the same brands,
| which doesn't necessarily equate to a greater variety.
|
| Well, just being someone who grew up in US and living in
| the EU now. As well as traveling quite prolificly
| throughout, I can attest (anecdotally, at least), that it
| does correlate to a larger brand diversity.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Many companies had used benzoates to hide poor sanitation and
| low-quality tomatoes. Ketchup was often made from leftover tomato
| trimmings that were stored poorly and then bottled with a heavy
| dose of benzoate, which also covered up factories' shoddy
| sanitization practices that would otherwise breed mold and
| bacteria.
|
| This sounds suspiciously similar to the US practice of washing
| poultry meat with chlorine and eggs with water (which massively
| reduces its shelf life).
| deaddodo wrote:
| > This sounds suspiciously similar to the US practice of
| washing poultry meat with chlorine
|
| You mean the exact same thing Europeans do with leafy greens?
|
| But one is a target of economic protectionism and the other
| isn't, so it must be scary _in that specific case_.
|
| > eggs with water (which massively reduces its shelf life).
|
| Ok, and?
| fedeb95 wrote:
| it's not that hard to do your own ketchup, or some quicker
| variants of it.
|
| One I do: - chop some onions - put some oil in a pot - cook the
| onions at not too high heat - after a few minutes, add soy sauce,
| vineagr, a good amount of sugar, pepper (optionally tomato sauce;
| exact quantities and spices depend on your unique taste) - keep
| cooking for at least 40 minutes with a lid on. now and then check
| if it's too dry add water
| robin_reala wrote:
| Your recipe seems to be missing tomatoes (assuming you weren't
| going for an onion ketchup?).
| frogulis wrote:
| On the topic of non-tomato ketchup, a video that has stuck
| with me over the years: https://youtu.be/29u_FejNuks
| bluGill wrote:
| I see a lot of recipes that call for ketchup, but they also
| call for all the ingredients in ketchup as well. I often just
| substitute an extra can of tomatoes, some sugar and spices.
| keiferski wrote:
| A fun fact: in Pittsburgh (where Heinz is from), many of the
| original industrial buildings have been remodeled into luxury
| lofts. I have only been outside the complex, so I can't confirm
| if there are any lingering tomato smells.
|
| https://www.heinzlofts.com
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._J._Heinz_Company_complex
| nottorp wrote:
| > Heinz's new tomato ketchup cost two to three times more than
| its competitors. _But the price increase also paid for the
| largest advertising campaign the industry had ever seen_.
|
| Long tradition of competing on anything but merits :)
| strawhatguy wrote:
| And to encourage the government to rule your competitors'
| products are 'unsafe', maybe even forbid selling altogether...
| daedrdev wrote:
| To be clear the full sentence said:
|
| > Thanks in part to high-quality ingredients, Heinz's new
| tomato ketchup cost two to three times more than its
| competitors. But the price increase also paid for the largest
| advertising campaign the industry had ever seen
|
| So it was higher quality and had the biggest advertising
| campaign.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| What confuses me is that, though as I understand it Ketchup was a
| general term to decscribe a variety of sauces, in Cantonese it
| sounds exactly like Tomato ("Ke") Paste ("tchup"). Given its
| origins in southeast Asia, I had assumed that could not possibly
| be a coincidence.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| Wiktionary[1] says it's "probably ultimately from Hokkien
| Chinese Xie Zhi (ke-chiap, "fish sauce")". So not a million
| miles off?
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ketchup
| SeanLuke wrote:
| chiap sure? Ke no. In Cantonese, fish is yu. But yeah.
|
| Also: I had thought it was originally Malay.
| arp242 wrote:
| Malay "ketjap" or "kecap" (different types of soy sauces)
| comes from Chinese "ke-chiap". It may be directly inspired
| by Malay languages without knowledge of Chinese and still
| be "ultimately from Hokkien Chinese".
| samatman wrote:
| Hokkien/Min and Cantonese are not mutually intelligible
| languages.
| me_me_me wrote:
| Tomatoes are relatively late addition to european cuisine
| (1500ish), there would be influences from a silk for
| centuries before. It sounds quite probable.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| This comment sounds like you might mistakenly think
| tomatoes are Chinese.
| huytersd wrote:
| Not sure exactly what you're saying but the Europeans
| brought tomatoes to India and East Asia.
| supertofu wrote:
| A reminder that tomatoes are native to South America, and
| did not exist anywhere else until colonization of the
| Americas.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| I can imagine some exec fine tuning the transliteration. Coca
| cola was first transliterated "bite the wax tadpole" or "female
| horse stuffed with wax". Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese
| characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-
| le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the
| mouth."
|
| Leaving this here since the site hijacked ctrl+c to add its
| url: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/business-jokes/coca-
| col...
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| Is the current formulation still free of preservatives?
|
| It's great the bottles don't spoil after being packaged, but I
| assume once opened all the careful boiling done at the beginning
| becomes irrelevant. And it's always been unclear to me how long
| you can keep a bottle around from that point onward! Especially
| say at a diner, where the bottle is non-refrigerated and sitting
| for days/months/years (periodically topped up)
| eru wrote:
| Ketchup has a lot of vinegar, ie it's pretty sour. That alone
| helps with preservation.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| Salt and vinegar are preservatives, but there are no benzoates
| in Heinz. In other countries I have encountered preservatives,
| added colors and even artificial thickeners in some brands.
| greggsy wrote:
| The thickeners are (along with the obvious reason of
| thickness) to avoid 'serum', which is the undesirable blurt
| of pale, watery liquid that comes out of you don't shake it
| enough.
| treadmill wrote:
| Or you could, you know, shake the bottle instead of adding
| crap to the ketchup.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Shaking has the additional benefit of reducing the
| viscosity and making it easier to dispense, due to
| ketchup being thixotropic.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| That and poor sauce technique.
|
| Part of the problem here is people not closing the bottle
| at the table. Humidity condenses inside of the bottle,
| which is typically still cold from the refrigerator.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| This constitutes yet another example of where we have
| substituted a chemical for a physical process.
| greggsy wrote:
| They removed sodium benzoate in the early 20th century. They
| put this tweet [1] out a couple of years ago alongside some
| other social media campaigns.
|
| The consensus was at the time was that it's shelf stable due to
| the acidity, but it still needs to be refrigerated after
| opening. Restaurants go through sauce quicker, so they can
| leave it on the table.
|
| [1] https://x.com/heinzuk/status/1673651138774589444
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| you don't think diners just top up the bottles at the end of
| the day when they're closing? I'm skeptical they run the
| bottles through the dish washer
| e40 wrote:
| They definitely top off the bottles. I've seen them do it.
| dannyphantom wrote:
| So I have a rather unfortunate tale about ketchup being
| refilled at diners from my time working as a server in
| undergrad that affirms your concerns.
|
| In the back of the kitchen, we had a ketchup refill area
| which used a large bag-in-box system; here is what that
| looks like: https://i.imgur.com/jP8zrrI.png
|
| As you can imagine, the bag lasted quite a while as we
| would just top up the classic red ketchup bottle with a
| screw lid. But...because our restaurant (Hamburger Mary's)
| was low/no-volume from Monday to Thursday, those bottles
| just...uh...sat on the tables for days on end, at most
| they'd sit out for a week.
|
| On the tables.
|
| At room temperature.
|
| With constant exposure to air.
|
| You can probably see where this is going:
|
| The ketchup would gradually ferment due to the warm room
| temperature and continuous exposure to air. This
| fermentation process gave it a unique 'tangy' flavor that
| some customers mistook for a special "beer ketchup". Given
| that I worked in Milwaukee, WI (a city known for its
| breweries and beer culture) their assumption wasn't
| _entirely_ baseless
|
| But in reality, they were complimenting the taste
| of...well...rancid ketchup.
|
| I left shortly after that experience to a real restaurant
| (Rock Bottom; if you like cajun pasta, here is their recipe
| for it: https://imgur.com/a/fjZnDAz) but yeah -- definitely
| be careful where you go to eat. Higher than normal employee
| turnover is absolutely a warning sign that the restaurant
| is poorly run and _probably not the best place to eat_.
| chasil wrote:
| How were the shows?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_Mary's
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| I don't know how long it takes to go bad, but I do know that I
| use ketchup very rarely, mostly to make other sauces, and I
| keep a bottle in the fridge and check it before every time I
| use it. I've tasted ketchup that's been in the fridge for 2-3
| years past the expiration date that has no obvious defects and
| looks and tastes just like fresh ketchup. I think the vinegar
| and the cold provide a lot of preservation.
| cafard wrote:
| If you have an open weekend in the late summer, you can make your
| own ketchup. We did this a couple of summers just over twenty
| years ago. Then we bought an old house, and there were no open
| weekends.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| A weekend if you're fancy :-)
|
| I found that tomato paste, sugar, vinegar and ground up
| pickling spice was good enough for me. And only took 15
| minutes.
| huytersd wrote:
| What's pickling spice?
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| It's a spice mix that's used in pickling vegetables.
|
| https://www.allrecipes.com/article/pickling-spice/
| danielvaughn wrote:
| When I lived in NYC, I would frequent this coffee shop down near
| Little Italy. They had a grape ketchup for sale. I never bought
| one but always wanted to try it. I'd probably hate it because my
| brain is so hard-wired to think of ketchup as a tomato-based
| sauce, but I was still curious about it.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Malcolm Gladwell wrote a thing on ketchup years ago called "The
| Ketchup Conundrum". [1]
|
| It's worth a read as it goes deep into the history of ketchup but
| more so it investigates food tasting, super tasters, etc. It
| turns out that Heinz Ketchup is essentially a perfect food in
| terms of taste. People don't get tired of it and other ketchups
| come and go because they are all ultimately flawed. Some grab
| people initially but they tire of it because it isn't balanced.
| Heinz is as are a few other products the article talks about.
|
| [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-
| co...
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's perfect or the only balanced ketchup, but
| it fits very well into its role and is hard to consistently
| improve on in ways that are strictly better for the final
| product _and competitive with its cost_.
|
| It's a notorious "newb trap" for chefs. You see a place making
| their own ketchup, that stuff might be good but you know they
| don't have a seasoned professional's view of where value is
| made. It takes hours of labor to make ketchup for something
| that in the end doesn't make your burger taste better than
| heinz does.
| nemo44x wrote:
| People continue to make ketchups that people say they prefer
| after a single bite and it's usually because they have a
| certain flavor that stands out. But they don't see return
| customers.
|
| Similar to soda. Coke has just the right combination of
| things that no one else is close. Pepsi used to do a blind
| taste test and people preferred Pepsi after a single taste.
| But it's 1-dimensional and people quickly tire of it. Coke
| eventually comes out on top.
|
| "Perfect" is subjective but the article describes a ratings
| system that super tasters use. Heinz ketchup comes out
| perfect. And the lack of competition proves it.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Eh don't be _so_ credulous about shit malcolm gladwell says
| lol. Heinz 's dominance probably comes down to the usual
| matrix of suitability across a large set of uses,
| consistency, cost, marketing, familiarity. I'm _agreeing
| with you_ that it 's very well balanced and nearly
| impossible to broadly beat at its price point. My former-
| professional opinion is that they hit a local maximum
| around price and flexibility, not that they somehow have
| the one perfect food product on the planet though.
| mannyv wrote:
| Heinz dominance of the market is evidence that you're
| wrong.
|
| I occasionally try other ketchup brands, and they really
| aren't "better" in any dimension that I can discern.
| They're different, but ultimately unsatisfying.
|
| If you have a product that hits 98% on any dimension that
| matters, there's really not a lot of room for "better."
|
| That also goes for the difference between straight Heinz
| and the Simply Heinz (the one made with sugar). There's a
| non meaningful flavor difference, but straight Heinz is
| the clear winner in that I don't buy SH.
| samatman wrote:
| I'm fairly sure that the ingredient that makes Coke
| distinctive is neroli. It's the only known ingredient in
| Coke which is moderately expensive, and the brand buys a
| fair amount of total world production, presumably at a good
| price. The also-rans don't use it, once you know what to
| look for this is quite clear.
| bigie35 wrote:
| Kinda weird about atlas obscura articles every since it was
| discovered several articles have been faked.
|
| Granted all those articles were from one author, but I still
| remain a bit skeptical.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time (of the article):
|
| _When Every Ketchup but One Went Extinct_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32774584 - Sept 2022 (120
| comments)
|
| _When Every Ketchup but One Went Extinct_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32557361 - Aug 2022 (1
| comment)
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Mushroom ketchup is quite nice, easy way of disposing stale
| mushrooms. I must try using wild mushrooms one day.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I moved from the UK to the US and was disappointed to learn that
| Heinz ketchup is _different_ here. The taste is not the same.
|
| But then I discovered that in the US they sell a variant called
| "Simply", which seems to be the same recipe as the UK/EU version.
| schmichael wrote:
| > A few years later, after a woman in Pennsylvania sent Heinz a
| dozen bottles of her homemade, tastier, better-looking, benzoate-
| free ketchup, they adopted her recipe, which was also sweet,
| vinegary, and thick.
|
| This is a throwaway sentence mid article, but it makes it sound
| like the recipe that allowed Heinz to dominate was from an unpaid
| woman! Heinz had already figured out how to make ketchup shelf
| stable without preservatives, but I'm intrigued to know if he
| would have "won" without her recipe!
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Secret ingredient here must be sugar/corn-syrup. Makes a good
| thickener. Don't need preservatives when your sugar
| concentration is high enough.
|
| And who doesn't love sweet?
|
| (Acidity from vinegar helps too)
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