Title: How Was Ketchup Invented?
Headings: How Was Ketchup Invented?
How Was Ketchup Invented?
It is a dynamic red concoction. At once savory and sweet, with just the right amount of puckering twang, it is slathered and squirted onto our favorite foods.
Ketchup
Go Further
Animals
History & Culture

Content: By the end of the 19th Century, benzoates were seen as particularly harmful to health. At the forefront of the war against them was one Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who maintained that the use of these harmful preservatives was unnecessary if high quality ingredients were used and handled properly. ( See “ Chemicals Within Us .”) Wiley partnered with a Pittsburgh man named Henry J. Heinz who had started producing ketchup in 1876. Heinz was also convinced American consumers did not want chemicals in their ketchup. In answer to the benzoate controversy, Heinz developed a recipe that used ripe, red tomatoes—which have more of the natural preservative called pectin than the scraps other manufacturers used—and dramatically increased the amount of vinegar and to reduce risk of spoilage. Heinz began producing preservative-free ketchup, and soon dominated the market. In 1905, the company had sold five million bottles of ketchup. With the rise of commercial ketchup, recipes for the condiment slowly vanished from cookbooks. Home cooks found that homemade ketchup just didn’t taste “right.”