Tip - Ketchup Facts

Ketchup Facts

   1. 97% of american homes keep ketchup in their kitchen.
   2. Each person eats about 3 bottles a year.
   3. A tablespoon of ketchup has 16 calories and no fat.
   4. 4 tablespoons of ketchup, about the amount you would eat with a order of fries, 
      are the nutritional equivalent of an entire ripe medium tomato.
   5. In 1992, ketchup sales were $723 million.
      The average price of a quart of ketchup averaged $1.16
      The average price of a quart of salsa averaged $5.50
      Divide the first price into the second and you'll see that on whatever day, sales of all
      salsas put together exceed those of ketchup, ketchup will still be 4.74 times
      more popular than salsa because salsa is 4.74 times more expensive.
   6. As with wines, there are good years and bad,
      depending on how sweet and flavorfull the tomatoes were.
   7. Most brands are made from tomato paste or tomato concentrate, boiled down in late
      summer when tomatoes are harvisted, and used throughout the year to cook the final
      product.
   8. Ketchup made in summer is made directly from ripe tomatoes.
   9. Heinz ketchup has a four-digit number on the bottle cap. 
      Ignoring the first two letters, the last digit indicated the year and the first three
      digits tell you the day when the ketchup was bottled.
10. Heinz has a 55% market share
11. Hunt's has a 19% share
12. Del Monte lags with a 9% share
13. All other generic and private brands add up to 17%
14. The sum total of gourmet and regional ketchups reaches only 2%

The source for this information was from: Vogue, iss#8 v.182 p.244 Aug, 1992.

The most popular theory is the the word ketchup is derived from koe-chiap or ke-tsiap 
in the Amoy dialect of China, where it meant the brime of pickled fish or shellfish. 

Some people prefer the Malayan word kechap(spelled ketjap by the Dutch), which may have 
come from the Chinese in the first place. In any way, some time in the late seventeen 
century the name and perhaps some sampled arrived in England where it appeared in print 
as catchup in 1690 and then as ketchup in 1711. These names stuck with the British, 
who quickly appropriated them for their own pickled condiments of anchovies or oysters.

The FDA is so sure about the ingredients of ketchup that it requires every one of the 
following in anything labeled ketchup, catsup, or catchup.

   1.cook and strained tomato sauce
   2.vinegar
   3.sugar
   4.salt
   5.flavored with onion or garlic
   6.spices such as cinnamon, cloves mace, allspice, nutmeg, ginger,and cayenne

The FDA regulations concentrate on thickness, "The consistency of the finished food is 
such that its flow is not more than 14 centimeters in 30 seconds at 20 degrees C when 
tested in a Bostwick Consistometer in the following manner...".

Henry J. Heinz began making ketchup in the year of 1876. His recipe has not changed 
much since then. Heinz was neither the inventer of modern day ketchup nor the first to 
bottle it commercially. The tomato is a native of the Andes, but early in the 1500s, 
while living in Mexico, a expedition of Spanish conquistadores discovered it, and it 
followed them back to Europe. There the tomato found a home in the cookery of Spain, 
Italy, and Portugal, but northern Europeans were not sure for 2 centuries whether it 
was poisonous or not.

The overall outlines of a modern ketchup are simple: a pound of tomatoes ends up as 
about 1/4 pound of thick ketchup container about 20 percent sugar and 1.5 percent acid. 
Fresh tomatoes contain 3 or 4 percent sugar to begin with, which becomes 12 to 16 percent 
as the mixture is boiled down. But, the more you cook tomatoes to evaporate their water, 
the more you damage their fresh flavor and color.

There are hundreds of different ketchup recipes from tomato to apple to peach, cumin,
banana, smoky,cherry Chinese ,mango,

here is the site it is about com's:
http://homecooking.about.com/food/homecooking/library/archive/blcon13.htm?iam=mt&terms=%2Bketchup