ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 13, 1997 TAG: 9701150013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TED ANTHONY ASSOCIATED PRESS
This was no burger-and-fries crew. We're definitely talking the pardon-me-would-you-have-any-Grey-Poupon set here.
Didn't matter. Genteel elbows were thrown by people with French accents. Men in bow ties clutched at Chinet plates. These words were actually uttered: ``Excuse me - I'm trying to get to the mushroom ketchup.''
But anticipation - and a healthy crowd - were keeping members of a culinary history group waiting to taste more than 57 varieties of ketchup culled by Andrew F. Smith, who knows the stuff like nobody's business.
A good thing, too, since it's become his business.
Smith, a culinary historian whose last book traced the tomato's beginnings, spent five years researching the history of the french fry's favorite lotion for his new book, ``Pure Ketchup.''
Smith talks with great animation about the condiment that has ruled his life for much of the 1990s. He is a font of ketchup (catsup?) knowledge, from the purported origins of the name (an unverified southern Chinese word, ``ketsiap'') to the recipe for cockle ketchup (the secret: port, anchovies and garlic).
``Ketchup is a thread to our past, a glimpse into our present and a link to our future,'' says Smith, 50.
Fortunately, there's a trace of irony in his voice - but not much.
So why spend a chunk of your life gathering data about a venerable foodstuff that's usually served in a little packet at McDonald's?
``For us, history was taught as kings and queens and battles and wars,'' he says. ``Those things are important. But the things we do in our daily lives are important, too.''
The book starts out as a sweeping history - ketchup in the ancient Mediterranean, ketchup evolving with the help of the British Empire - but finds its stride in an amazing variety of fun historical nuggets that Smith uncovered about ketchup's evolution.
``You have a fish sauce, and all of a sudden you have tomato ketchup,'' he says. ``And they're not the same, but there's a link between them.''
Consider: the use of coal-tar dyes in the late 1800s to make ketchup a brilliant scarlet; what the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act did to the ketchup industry; the invention of preservative-free ketchup in 1907; the consolidation of the industry in the 1920s and 1930s; and the history of ketchup advertising.
Smith became a man obsessed.
``The more I got into ketchup, the more I fell in love with the story,'' he says. ``It's got foreign intrigue, mean adulterators, captains of industry. All the elements of a great story are there.''
He goes on to deal with the Heinz juggernaut and, of course, the 1980s ketchup debacle, when the condiment was declared a vegetable by the Reagan administration to save money on the federal school lunch program. He seems to have no opinion on the matter.
These days, he says, homemade ketchup is making a comeback - in blueberry, plum, even grape varieties. And designer ketchups are sweeping the nation today to compete with ketchup's biggest competitor: salsa. Thus we have ``New England Chunky Ketchup'' and ``McIlhenny Farms Spicy Ketchup'' appearing on shelves.
And ketchup is seeping, as it were, back into other cultures. Japanese now use it on their cabbage rolls, Greeks on their pasta and Swedes on their fish balls.
``Some denounce it as an American culinary atrocity, and others condemn it as a promoter of global homogenization,'' he says. ``However, complain as gourmetdom may, ketchup is one of the greatest success stories the sauce world has ever known.''
So what does Mr. Ketchup do now?
The history of popcorn - undoubtedly an epic yarn that winds through the annals of American Indian culture, movies and microwave ovens.
``We think of these as the corners of culture, but they're really the Main Street,'' Smith says. ``This is what we are - what we eat. We are ketchup. We are hot dogs. We are hamburgers and potato chips and cookies and candy. So how did they get here? Where did they come from? Why do we like them?
``Nobody's answering these questions about these things. I want to know.''
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Andrew Smith is the author of "Pure Ketchup: Theby CNBHistory of America's National condiment': ``Some denounce it as an
American culinary atrocity, and others condemn it as a promoter of
global homogenization,'' he says. ``However, complain as gourmetdom
may, ketchup is one of the greatest success stories the sauce world
has ever known.''" color.