Ketchup is arguably the most ubiquitous condiment in the U.S. Ninety-seven percent of Americans have a bottle of ketchup in their refrigerator, usually Heinz, and we buy about 10 billion ounces of the red food every year, almost three bottles per person per year. Supposedly we spend more on salsa, but in terms of volume, ketchup is at the top of the list.

Bright red in color, tangy, sweet, salty, and full of "meaty" ketchup, ketchup provides color and condiment accents, as well as familiar and intensifying smells and textures. It's the perfect complement to the American diet: contrasting salty and fatty flavors while enhancing the sweetness of our most popular foods. While we think of it as "just" a flavor for what we actually eat, it has helped change the way food is grown, processed, and managed.

We put ketchup on fries, hamburgers, and hot dogs (even though ketchup and hot dogs are disgusting to many people). We pour it over eggs, mac and cheese, breaded and fried clam strips, and chicken fingers. We use it as an ingredient in sauces and casserole dishes. Back in the 1980s, politicians and activists even debated the status of ketchup as a vegetable in school lunches, although in later decades, ketchup's distant cousin, salsa, and ketchup on pizza made that cut.

Ketchup exemplifies the world's new industrialized food, with its distinctive sweetness and pungent flavor derived from rigorous mass production. Typically American, ketchup is seamlessly standardized and mass-produced for quality, as well as cleanliness and low cost, which Americans traditionally value in their food, often at the expense of taste. Shelf stability, in essence, creates what we call "American flavor.

Ketchup was not invented in the United States. In early China, it was a fermented tomato-free fish sauce. British sailors bought the sauce, called ketsiaporcetchup by 17th-century Chinese and Indonesian traders, to ease the dry and plain hard candy and salty pork they ate on ships. Over the next few centuries, ketchup spread throughout the British Empire, traveling the world with the navy. When they returned to England, sailors and others tried to replicate ketchup to liven up standard, greasy meat-and-potatoes dishes or fish stews, or to add flavor to gravies and broths. Recipe writers and small manufacturers tried to recreate the complex flavors of the sauce, substituting nuts, mushrooms, or shallots for the fish.Most early 19th-century cookbooks contain recipes for a variety of tomato sauces.

, but when ketchup was combined with tomatoes and bottled industrially, it became truly American.An early recipe for ketchup appeared in the United Kingdom in 1817, calling for "a gallon of good, red, perfectly ripe ketchup (sic)," along with anchovies, shallots, salt, and various spices. and various spices, and it was the Americans who really invented ketchup.

American ketchup, which originated in what is now Mexico and South America, was introduced to Europe and North America by the Spanish conquistadors, and by the 19th century had a ubiquitous garden plant. (Earlier, tomatoes were considered unhealthy, even poisonous.) Tomatoes became the basis for many sauces or stews, and before long, tomatoes were bottled as a concentrated fermented ketchup, marinated in vinegar and spices, much as housewives made mushroom ketchup.

But historian Andrew Smith notes that ketchup became so popular that its use quickly spread to all parts of the U.S. The American meal of the 19th century, much like the British diet of the time, consisted of stews, soups, coarsely chopped meats, vegetables, and fruits, as well as breads, loaves, and more bread. The flavor and color of the tomato ketchup actually added some rather monotonous protein and grain combinations.

American manufacturers began mass-producing tomato ketchup in the late 1800s, and this processing created the condiment's distinctive flavor. Early bottled ketchups fermented or spoiled relatively quickly, but industrial producers found that adding additional vinegar helped preserve them. Over time, they added more and more vinegar, and then they began to add sugar to balance the vinegar's acidity. Ketchup became sweeter and more acidic than it was. Americans gradually adapted to this particular flavor of commercial ketchup, which was different from the ketchup produced by home cooks. It had a thicker texture, was made with more sugar, and had a brighter, more pleasing red color than homemade (due to additives and preservation methods). Industrialized ketchup began to influence other American foods. As American cities grew, so did the number of diners, hamburger joints, and chicken coops, which often served greasy foods that paired well with ketchup. Food scientists at the Pittsburgh-based H.J. Heinz Company

Food scientists eventually found the perfect balance of sweetness, saltiness, acidity, and freshness, creating, as author Malcolm Gladwell notes, a precisely calibrated product that would be difficult for others to duplicate. -- a "platonic ideal of ketchup." Heinz demonstrated its product at international fairs, spreading the gospel of ketchup throughout North America, the British Isles, and beyond.

With its just-right formula, as well as its manufacturing reach and global ambitions, it quickly became the leading producer of ketchup in the United States, with sales of $5 million into the early 1900s,

In addition to its industrial formulas, Heinz played a major role in developing, refining, and promoting sanitary production methods, not only for its ketchup but for the dozens of products it produced. The company helped standardize the sterilization of bottles and cans, insisted that workers adhere to strict cleanliness rules, and even pushed for sanitary food-processing legislation. Other large food processors followed suit. This company made ketchup, and then ketchup influenced how everything else was processed.

It may not be far-fetched to say that after changing the way American food tastes and is managed later in the century, ketchup also helped change the way it is grown. Innovations in tomato breeding and mechanical harvester technology, thanks in part to the demand for the condiment, helped define modern industrial agriculture. In the 1960s, scientists at the University of California, Davis, developed a mechanical tomato harvester. Around the same time, plant geneticists perfected a thick-skinned, round-shaped tomato that could withstand machine harvesting and truck transportation. This new tomato arguably lacked flavor, but it emerged as the perfect storm of breeding and harvesting techniques that allowed for a steady supply of tomatoes that kept bottlers and canners in business. Almost all tomatoes used in sauces and tomato sauces are products of this period, as are many other fruits and vegetables produced in the U.S.

Heinz advertisement from the 1896 Journal of Culinary Science and Domestic Economy of the Boston Culinary School. (Image courtesy of *** PUBLIC **** RESOURCES)

In the early days, ketchup served as a great equalizer, with the "peculiar and unprecedented ability to provide something for everyone." Ketchup became "the dominant and most popular condiment, and its appeal to Americans was profound, writes food historian Elizabeth Rozin, who calls it "the Esperanto of cooking. Ketchup served as a class equalizer. Regardless of education, Americans could go to a roadside diner or barbecue joint. For most, a burger and fries with ketchup was a democratic, tasty lowest-Mem denominator meal. The appeal of ketchup today is partly because it embodies principles that Americans hold in high regard, including consistency, value, and cleanliness. In addition, Rozin points out that the use of ketchup is dictated by foods and meals that are considered "American" in preparation and presentation: think hamburger and fries, "ballpa"