Why are ketchup bottles often labeled "tomato ketchup"? Is this not redundant? Tomato ketchup is the latecomer. For most of ketchup’s life, the word did not mean “sweet red stuff for fries.” It meant a dark, salty, shelf-stable sauce that tasted like the ocean, a forest floor, or a barrel of walnuts. When Heinz stamped Tomato Ketchup on a bottle in 1876, it was not being fussy. It was warning you that this one had fruit in it. The name comes from Hokkien Chinese kê-tsiap (also written kôe-chiap): a fermented fish brine from coastal Fujian, cousin to the fish sauces of Southeast Asia. British and Dutch traders met versions of it in the 1600s, liked the punch of salt and umami, and carried the idea home. They did not have the same fish, or soybeans. So they improvised. “Ketchup” became English for any long-keeping savory liquor you could bottle. The star of 18th- and 19th-century Britain was mushroom ketchup: whole mushrooms packed in salt until they wept a dark juice, then boiled with mace, pepper, and sometimes anchovy. The result is thin, almost black, closer to Worcestershire than to anything you would put on a burger. Geo Watkins still bottles it in the UK; chefs use it in gravies and stews, not as a dip. Walnut ketchup was a household staple too. Jane Austen’s circle kept a green-walnut recipe—pounded unripe walnuts, vinegar, salt, then cloves, mace, nutmeg, horseradish, and shallots. Cookbooks also offered oyster, cockle, peach, plum, and cucumber versions. Ketchup was a method, not a flavor. Tomatoes arrived late, and first in America. James Mease of Philadelphia published a “love apple” ketchup in 1812. Early tomato versions were thin, watery, and prone to spoiling; the fruit’s high water content fought preservation. Heinz fixed that in 1876 with ripe red tomatoes, more vinegar, and more sugar—thick, sweet-sour, and stable enough to sit on a shelf. The label Tomato Ketchup was a product differentiator in a market still full of mushroom and walnut bottles. The tomato version won. The others did not vanish; they just stopped being what most people meant by the word. They are still around. Mushroom ketchup remains a British cooking sauce. In the Philippines, banana ketchup is not a novelty. Food chemist María Orosa developed it in the 1930s so the country would not have to rely on imported tomatoes; saba bananas, vinegar, sugar, and spices, dyed red so it looked like the American bottle people already expected. Wartime shortages made it essential. It is still the default on tortang talong, fried chicken, and the sweet hot-dog spaghetti that defines Filipino-American fast food. So the bottle says “tomato” because, for a long time, that was the surprising part. Ketchup started as fish. It spent two centuries as mushrooms and walnuts. The red squeeze bottle is just the version that conquered the picnic table—and even that one has a banana-colored cousin that refuses to leave.

recommended reading this week: @alexeheath / @finkd - Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta’s biggest AI bet yet: why Meta is giving away personal agents, how Zuckerberg plans to make money from them, and his bet on privacy. interview + transcript. @thedankoe - You need to be delusional if you want to succeed: on choosing goals you actually want, how other people’s expectations limit your ambition, and being busy without getting anywhere. @OpenAI - Reimagining advertising with AI: sponsored agents, Shopify integration and managing campaigns inside ChatGPT. useful for understanding what businesses can start testing as conversational ads develop. @joshelman - Product Management is Still All About Telling Stories: how to explain who your product is for and why they should care. especially relevant when building something is getting easier than deciding what’s worth building. @SemiAnalysis_ - Everyone Says Datacenter Moratoriums Are Killing the US Buildout. We Mapped All 300 of Them: which restrictions actually delay construction, and why counting bans gives you a very different picture from checking individual projects. @benthompson - Salesforce AI Force, Agents as UI, The Race to Headless: why Salesforce is giving up its interface as a competitive advantage, and what that means for software businesses. subscriber-only. essential reading: the Zuckerberg interview + Dan Koe + Product Management is Still All About Telling Stories