
The Man Who Guards America's Ketchup - NaOH
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/09/02/754316710/meet-the-man-who-guards-americas-ketchup
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sparkpeasy
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...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-conundrum)

~~~
dewey
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...](http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke-my-heart)

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jonathanstrange
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.

~~~
Confusion
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.

~~~
Fnoord
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.

~~~
twic
Have you tried brown sauce?

[http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/brownsauce.htm](http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/brownsauce.htm)

~~~
Fnoord
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.

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anderskev
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.

~~~
moate
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.

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elbrian
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.

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

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TeMPOraL
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.

~~~
amelius
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)?

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

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dllthomas
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.

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JoeAltmaier
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?

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woodandsteel
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.

~~~
woodandsteel
oops, make that "ketchup"

