What is the history with Ketchup?

In the 1690s the Chinese mixed together a tasty concoction of pickled fish and spices and called it ke-tsiap.

By the early 1700s, the table sauce had made it to Malaysia, where it was discovered by British explorers, and by 1740, it had become an English staple.

Although today's ketchup is tomato based, it did not appear until about a century after other types.

By 1801, a recipe for tomato ketchup was created by Sandy Addison and was later printed in an American cookbook, the Sugar House Book. James Mease published another recipe in 1812.


In 1824, a ketchup recipe using tomatoes appeared in The Virginia Housewife (an influential 19th-century cookbook written by Mary Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's cousin).