In the eighteenth century kecap embarked upon a further journey. He emancipated itself from its native Phu �uoc to reach the Old Continent on the return routes of Europeans trading with Asia. These immediately became great admirers and importers of the product, interest testified in An account of the trade in India by CHARLES LOCKYER. In this publication dating back 1711, vademecum for aspiring capitalists, the English merchant mentions ke-tchup as one of the most profitable products, reliable source of generous earnings, mentioning the best qualities available in Tonquin region, northern Vietnam. Sauce’s newness and taste supported its diffusion all over Europe, by means of gastronomic contaminations that, in addition to making changes to the original recipe, edited its name too. The attempt made by English, German and Portuguese traders to capture the sound of the Chinese word, indeed, caused several variants of the term: ketchup, catsup, catchup and katchup. Lexical variants to which culinary ones soon were added. The need to replicate that powerful and intense flavour led to new creations. Some simple gimmicks and a radical inventive spirit: at first European chefs replaced ca com with the most common anchovy, adding mace, ginger and cloves to aromatize the whole. Later they began to hazard. A recipe published in 1742, on a London cookbook, testifies the intrusion of earth elements as main ingredients: shallots and mushrooms. A not-so-transient gimmick, destined to last for long. In the following years, from 1750 to 1850, the word 'ketchup' began to indicate a dark coloured sauce where, in addition to the presence of fish, ingredients such as mushrooms and walnuts prevailed. 88 in fermento in ferment THE nineteenth century was the age of sauce’s major change, when European kitchens took possession of its original flavour and reinterpreted it according to contemporary tastes and trends. Poor fish was, for instance, replaced by oysters, and wine was included in fermentation processes too. Transformation is now underway, and the Vietnamese sauce’s evolution kept on going relentless in new different forms. In 1817 the English man of science and formidable cook William Kitchiner published his Cooks Oracle, where he collected a dozen ketchup recipes: cucumbers, oysters, cardids, mussels and, finally, tomato were added to mushrooms and walnuts. In truth, the idea of ketchup as we actually know it had already been conceived five years earlier, in James Mease’s mind. In 1812 the American scientist from Philadelphia published the recipe LOVE-APPLE CATSUP the ketchup made of love apples [that’s how tomatoes were called at that time]. Sixty years later, in 1871, last leg of this journey began; a journey started from the island of Phu �uoc and destined to end on the other side of the world, in the industrial Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Noting that no brand of ketchup was able to prevail over the other, the entrepreneur Henry John Heinz had the intuition to sell his tomato sauce in transparent glass bottles, giving people the chance to see what they were buying. OF A BRAND CAPABLE OF BECOMING MORE FAMOUS THAN THE PRODUCT ITSELF. Travel, contamination and, finally, radical transformation. From the twentieth century the word ‘ketchup’ began to identify only a tomato-based sauce, a homemade or industrial product, always easy and quick to prepare. No trace of the ancient fermentation remained, no one knew anything about the humble island of Phu �uoc. KIND OF A DECEPTION. For a long time the whole western population was happily persuaded that kecap, a sauce based on fermented fish, had never existed. I T WAS THE BEGI NNI NG OF AN EMPI RE , 89
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