Pass the ketchup! Wiki-style map I made on the fascinating historic possibilities of the ubiquitous condiment (Patreon)
Content
Ketchup's etymology and its modern cognate, kecap in Malay, hints at a storied history of global contact and exchange, as well as cultural ironies.
Here's a fun Wiki-style map on this topic. I've long found the etymology of ketchup interesting and ironic. Hokkien and Chinese people alike no longer use a term akin to the purported word of origin, 膎汁, kê-chiap and xiezhi in Hokkien and Chinese, which translates to "pickled fish brine," but Malay people seem to have borrowed the word to mean a condiment or sauce of any kind, like kecap manis for "sweet soy sauce, hoisin sauce," and kecap ingris for Worcestershire sauce.
It was through contact with the Malay in Southeast Asia, it is believed, that Europeans came to use the word catsup or ketchup to describe a whole range of condiments. At one time, there were mushroom, walnut, palm sugar-soy, and seafood-based ketchups. This is my ode to that time and all the possibilities that could have come from that starting point. Yes, it's not just linguistic diversity I'm after in Altera, it's also things as trivial as what people dip their fritters in across the globe.
One more thing on the exotic flair/conveyance of the word. Ketchup reflects geographic ironies. It seems ketchup is usually made by an exotic or previously foreign ingredient (i.e. introduced fermented soy for kecap manis is mixed with local palm sugar). So that is even more fun for me to map out, to try to show how ketchup passed around the world not only as a word, but also what foodstuff was introduced and became a key ingredient in the local diet. You could ketchup gives a whole new meaning to being tongue tied.
By the way, this map's topic should not be confused with "what staple condiment or dipping sauce is most preferred."
Footnotes to compliment the list in the map legend:
- hoisin (soy based) - Hokkien, Luzon, Southeast Asia
- sacha/xo sauce; so instead of the more recent coining of "X.O. sauce," I have it here that in Altera, the Kantonese refer to the Hokkien sacha with the characters for guizhi.
- As northern Chinese people do not use oyster sauce as more readily, I have it here that their unfamiliarity with the sauce leads to the confusion of naming oyster sauce guizhi, while in the rest of the world, it is known as oyster sauce, or goyu, from the Japanese.
- The mushroom-based sauce, one of the earliest colonial recorded condiments, is preserved in this historic North American/Thulean contact range
- The vinegary walnut-based sauce comes from the Russians experimenting with walnut and walnut-pomegranate sauces from Iverian (Georgian) and Persian contact
- Kelp sauce...couldn't help myself here. I am a big fan of kelp and I find it weird that only Celtic and East Asian cultures seem to appreciate kelp as a staple ingredient, along with Chileans today.
- Tomato, as with OTL, but does not become dominant
- Tomatillo sauce...this is one of three Spanish-introduced nightshade sauces that were all popular at once, but its original range of prevalence has lost out to the popularity of the sweeter and creamier tomato and tamarillo cousin sauce.
- Tamarillo or tree tomato-based sauce...I read that the fruit is gaining popularity in parts of East Africa in OTL. I also came across it in Taiwan, which shows it had spread across the world via the Portuguese or Dutch and was at one point probably more popular than it is today.
- Topoto or topotopo or uchava is the other cousin sauce to tomato ketchup. I quite like the fruit and have made ketchup with it myself. It is creamier and custardy. It is apparently popular in Egypt and parts of North Africa, as well as Hawaii.
- Noni is supposedly very hard to palate or is an acquired taste. See Fruit Explorer'sreview. I had to plug it in somewhere as it seems to have all the notes that can make for a pungent dipping sauce.
- Purupuru is from the famous poroporo nightshade or cannibal fruit. Fruit Explorer also introduced me to this fruit. It was already used as a condiment in the Pacific, so why not have it be introduced to Peru, and ironically, become a status symbol/key import.
- Kujera comes from kutjera, a type of "bush tomato," and just as "bush tomato" in OTL Australia can refer to a number of related species, it also refers to ngaru here.
- Dipping sauces made from cherry and plum, plus hawthorne berries actually, are popular in China proper, and can easily get confused as a sauce with another name outside of the core cultural area.
- The apricot- and peach-based sauce is basically a reference to Chinese American cuisine's duck sauce. The fruit trees also grow well in this part of the world and can become a stand-in for the more traditional plum sauce.
- Apple sauce...I've heard apple sauce, mixed with onions and the right spices, can be turned into a ketchup-like condiment. Just wanted to spice things up for Northern Europeans who might have traditionally been less outward looking, at least in Altera, due to not having large foreign territorial connections/possessions compared to their southern neighbours.
- The tamarind-based sauce is also a reference to how tamarind hides in its etymology a turkey-analogue, in that it is seen as a fruit from Hind, or India. As the ingredient is less common than dates and figs in this part of the world, I can see tamarind chutney as being used as a condiment and compared to as other cultures' ketchups.
- The date-based sauce has a similar origin to the tamarind-based sauce...
- Ketchups made from tropical fruits like anana (pineapple), (desert) banana, mango, and papaya are possible. Here, I've made it so that the ingredients are not from local endemic species, but introduced species from trade.