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: The resistance to tomato ketchup can largely be chalked up to the widespread misconception among Europeans that tomatoes, which looked nearly identical to deadly nightshade berries, were poisonous. Tomatoes were largely considered an ornamental curiosity for gardens ever since Cortez had brought them back from the Americas in the 1500s, but they weren’t meant to be eaten. The English enjoyed ketchup for close to 200 years before anyone thought of chucking a tomato in the mix. Despite its status as a native fruit, Americans inherited Europe’s aversion to tomatoes. There were, of course, tomato advocates. 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.