Supermarkets typically have lots of different mustard varieties, but only a handful fo ketchup brands. Just curious. What’s the reason for this? I’ve heard from foodie friends that wide varieties of gourmet ketchups exist in speciality shops, but I’ve never seen them in the more pedestrian big box supermarkets where I shop yet there are endless varieties of mustard.
In my area, there is no need for any ketchup/catsup other than Heinz. Can’t answer for the rest of the world, though.
IMHO, ketchup is a fairly standarized. Durkee might be a bit sweeter, Red Gold might be a bit tarter but pretty minor differences overall.
Mustard on the other hand can vary widely. A basic yellow mustard, a Dusseldorf style, a French Dijon ( the real stuff that will clear you sinuses), or a horseradish style mustard are vastly different from each other. We won’t even get into the honey mustards, the BBQ mustards etc.
'Merican tastes. A lot of what is now called barbecue sauce is really flavored catsup. That’s how they were marketed in the sixties/seventies. 
Because it’s become a circular argument. We now define ketchup as the condiment that we think ketchup is.
Ketchup used to be considered any semi-thick sauce made from fruits, vegetables, spices, and vinegar (and sometimes other ingredients like fish or meat). Mildly spiced tomato ketchup was just one kind of ketchup. But now any other kind of ketchup is called something else; barbeque sauce, steak sauce, jerk sauce, thai sauce, curry sauce, etc.
Here’s a recipe I posted last April:
Banana ketchup
1 dried ancho chile
6 very ripe bananas
1 1/3 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/3 cup onions
2 garlic cloves
2/3 cup tomato paste
2 cups water
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon chili pepper
2 teaspoons allspice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
big pinch ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
big pinch black pepper
6 tablespoons dark rum
Soak ancho chile in warm water for 15 minutes. Remove stem and seeds.
Peel and cut up bananas. Puree with 1/2 cup vinegar. Pour into heavy saucepan.
Chop onions. Puree onions, raisins, garlic, ancho chile, tomato past, and the rest of the vinegar. Pour into saucepan along with the water. Stir everything together.
Bring to simmer over medium heat. Reduce to low heat and simmer uncovered for an hour. Add more water if it gets too thick.
Add corn syrup, sugar, and all the spices.
Simmer for another half hour or so until it’s thick. Add in the rum. Remove from heat and let it cool.
Puree the sauce and strain into a jar.
Keep it in the fridge. It’s good for about two weeks.
Because the French never really got their hands on ketchup.
How does Bierce put it in his definition of “mayonnaise”? “Mayonnaise: one of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.” Mustard is up there, too.
I remember reading a taste-test of ketchups. The person doing the article managed to find some gourmets brands that incorporated other flavors.
The general conclusion was that they all tasted like something had gotten into the ketchup that shouldn’t have been there.
57 varieties isn’t enough for you?
Heh. I know you’re joking, but even if the 57 Varieties trademark were actually based on the number of products that Heinz had on the market at the time (and it’s not), that would have been the number of different products, not the number of different ketchups.
Wow, that’s a great article, bouv! My favorite part was how he described someone by saying, “If he had been your freshman statistics professor, you would be a statistician today.”
It’s also fascinating what it says about ketchup, and the way tastes work. What it said about “amplitude,” the way flavors blend together in quality products, really made a lot of sense to me. It’s interesting that what you often look for in a meal or even a dish–a combination of distinct contrasting and complimetary flavors–is bad in an individual componant.
The author, Malcom Gladwell (whom you may know from such books as The Tipping Point and Blink), has such an amazing ability to bring ideas together in a creative way that makes compelling sense. I’d really love to know what it’s like inside his head!
Agreed. Really fascinating article.
Are smileys required now?
bouv’s link is more apropros anyhow.
A different take on this is to consider the number of tomato based sauces compared to the number of mustard seed based sauces available in the average supermarket. I think you will find more varieties of tomato sauce than varieties of mustard.
Okay, but for what? It looks tasty; what do you use it for?