I’ve always spelled ketchup as “ketchup”, probably because that’s how I’ve always seen it spelled on commercially produced bottles of the stuff. But I remember reading as a child some older books (maybe old Popeye comics?) where the characters consistently referred to the condiment as “catsup”. At first I wasn’t sure if they were talking about a different sort of sauce altogether, but I soon came to realize that the two terms are synonymous. Nowadays whenever I come across a reference to “catsup” (which isn’t too often), I chuckle to myself and think, “How quaint!”
Anyway, all this gets me wondering whether any sizeable manufacturer of ketchup these days labels their product as “catsup”. I wouldn’t mind acquiring a bottle or two, if only to casually serve it at my next dinner party and observe my guests’ reactions. Come to think of it, has any major ketchup producer ever labelled their product as “catsup”? For instance, was there ever a time when one could hie to their local Piggly Wiggly and buy themselves a bottle of Heinz Tomato Catsup?
I just used Google Ngram on “ketchup” and “catsup”. From about 1900 to about 1970, “catsup” was clearly ahead. Since then “ketchup” has clearly passed it. In the nineteenth century it was back and forth between the two forms:
Incidentally, salsa has been more popular in the U.S. than ketchup since the early 1990’s.
In southern Illinois (just across the river from St. Louis), in Collinsville, stands the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle, a 170’ tall water tower in the shape of a bottle of Brooks Catsup, built in 1949.
I grew up in the U.K. I vaguely remember that as a kid we called ketchup “tomato sauce”, but I can’t remember if that’s ever what it said on the (Heinz) bottle. Ketchup was certainly also used, but I’m pretty sure I never heard “catsup” at all until I came to the U.S.
Any other Brits on here who can remember our historic terminology?
Here are a couple of old ads from Hunt’s (the eternal “other brand” in ketchup, behind Heinz), showing that they spelled it “catsup” in the not-too-ancient past:
I grew up in Germany, but we early imported the English word “ketchup”. I only first heard about catsup in a Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns got broke, is forced to go shopping in a supermarket for the first time in his life and gets overchallenged by havingto choose between ketchup and catsup.
In Australia we called it Tomato Sauce, but ketchup is sneaking into regular use.
Catsup is a very old term based on the Chinese ke-tsiap a fermented fish sauce that then went to Malaysia and changed formula but the name stuck, sailors loved it added tomatoes and it now has morphed into Ketchup.
Fun factoid: *Kicap is now the Malay word for soy sauce.
*In Malay the letter c by itself stands for ch (or even tch). Because they have k for the k sound and s for the s sound, that leaves c with nothing else to do but spell the ch sound. It doesn’t need h to help it do so, so they omit the h. Makes good sense to me.
Tomato sauce or the proper, relevant Italian term, Arrabiata etc. It never seems to cause confusion as I’ve never been in an Italian restaurant would assume any form of ketchup was a potential pasta topping.
Brooks catsup and Plochmann’s mustard used to be two products I’d bring back to south Georgia from visits to Indiana. Brooks was the best! I haven’t had it in a while, though.
