The following text is an excerpt from Sour Grapes, a novel by Lee Skirboll. Its a nice summary of ketchup and will possible be followed by other interesting stories should they come my way.
Primordial perhaps, ketchup's saltiness is often disputed. Some Indonesian cultures and many Asian claim the invention of what we know today as ketchup, originating in the various fish sauces and chili pastes dating back thousands of years. Hotly contested, much debated, one's preference for ketchup can act as an accurate signpost to an individual's cultural and political allegiance.
In Pittsburgh for instance, a restaurateur would be run out of town on a rail for serving anything but Heinz 57. Some have tried to get by with Hunts or Del Monte, but to no avail; there are those in the city who upon entering any eating establishment quickly scan the table tops for ketchup. If the familiar Heinz is not apparent, they will quickly turn tail and run, never to return with their business.
And you'd be hard pressed to find ANY Pittsburgher who can't tell when some unscrupulous restaurant manager tries to pass off an inferior product in Heinz's own trademarked bottle. It is the worst sort of skullduggery, and is often met with by a patron's (understandable) violence.
Heinz is Heinz, perfect in its sweetness, in its consistency and tomato-osity. Never to be Hunts, never to be Dole, never to be spelled "Catsup."
Heinz ketchup is elemental, like the sea. Like the Atlantic Ocean specifically, salty, dirty, full of life, communications cables, sharks, algae, seaweed, sunlight. It is a distillation of the Atlantic with nothing between here and England but a vast undulating morass of swirling ketchup, waiting, raw, acrid and red. It sloshes gently upon the English coast, a bloody tide, a sweet mess, where two men sit freezing at an outdoor fish stand.
Copyright C 1995 Lee Skirboll