Title: How 500 Years Of Weird Condiment History Designed The Heinz Ketchup Bo
Headings: How 500 Years Of Weird Condiment History Designed The Heinz Ketchup Bottle
How 500 Years Of Weird Condiment History Designed The Heinz Ketchup Bottle
From a 17th-century fish sauce, ketchup evolved into a patent medicine, a carcinogenic health hazard, and eventually, a non-Newtonian fluid. Here’s how ketchup’s rich history is reflected in the design of a bottle of Heinz.
Editor’s Note
Why Tomato Ketchup?
Why Is The Bottle Transparent?
57 Varieties
Timeless

Content: In 1820, Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson of Salem, New Jersey, stood on the steps of the local courthouse and consumed an entire basket of tomatoes to prove they weren’t poisonous. By and large, though, it wasn’t until the 1830s that America got hip to the fact that tomatoes could be delicious. In 1834, an Ohio physician named Dr. John Cook Bennett declared tomatoes to be a universal panacea that could be used to treat diarrhea, violent bilious attacks, and indigestion. Pretty soon, Bennett was publishing recipes for tomato ketchup, which were then concentrated into pill form and sold as a patent medicine across the country. By 1876, tomatoes had undergone a remarkable turnaround in the court of public opinion. Tomato ketchup was not only popular, but because of the teachings of an influential quack promulgated by the patent medicine trade, tomato ketchup was actually considered to be a sort of tonic, a condiment that was actually healthier than normal ketchup. advertisement
At the time, though, nothing could be further from the truth. Why Is The Bottle Transparent? advertisement
“Filthy, decomposed and putrid.” These were the words that cookbook author Pierre Blot used in 1866 to describe the quality of commercial ketchups being sold at the time.