Ketchup (English)

Believe it or not, the ancestor of modern ketchup was completely tomato-free. Though tomato plants were brought to England from South American in the 1500s, their fruits weren’t eaten for centuries since people considered them poisonous. Instead, the precursor to our ketchup was a fermented fish sauce from southern China. As far back as 300 B.C., texts began documenting the use of fermented pastes made from fish entrails, meat byproducts and soybeans. The fish sauce, called “ge-thcup” or “koe-cheup” by speakers of the Southern Min dialect, was easy to store on long ocean voyages. It spread along trade routes to Indonesia and the Philippines, where British traders developed a taste for the salty condiment by the early 1700s. They took samples home and promptly corrupted the original recipe.

6 lbs mushrooms, broken into pieces, about 7½ quarts (3 kg)
1 cup sea salt (0.25 L)
2½ cups apple cider vinegar (625 mL)
20 anchovies
1 tsp. mace, ground (5 mL)
1 tsp. ground cloves (5 mL)
1 Tbsp. pepper, freshly cracked (15 mL)
1 slice ginger root
1½ cups shallots, sliced (375 mL)

Mix the mushrooms with the sea salt in a blow, cover and let them stand for nine days, stirring once or twice a day. Put them into a stoneware crock, cover tightly, and set the crock in a pan of water.

Cook over low heat for three hours. Strain the mushrooms through a sieve into a pot, and add the remaining ingredients to the juice — the proportions given for 5 cups of mushroom liquid. Keeping the pot covered, boil together over low heat until the liquid is reduced by half, then strain it through a jelly bag.

Bottle the ketchup and cover. Process.

Makes about 2½ pints (1¼ L).