Catsup

Ketchup

A dish of tomato ketchup
Alternative names	Catsup, tomato sauce, ketsup, red sauce
Type	Condiment
Main ingredients	Tomatoes, sugar (or high fructose corn syrup), vinegar, salt, spices and seasonings
Food energy (per serving)	103 kcal (431 kJ)

Ketchup is a table sauce. Traditionally, recipes featured ketchups made from egg whites, mushrooms, oysters, mussels, walnuts, or other foods, but in modern times the unmodified term usually refers to tomato ketchup.

Ketchup is a sweet and tangy sauce, typically made from tomatoes, sweetener, vinegar, and assorted seasonings and spices. Seasonings and spices vary by recipe, but commonly include onions, allspice, coriander, cloves, cumin, garlic, mustard and sometimes celery, cinnamon or ginger.

The market leader in United States (82% market share) and United Kingdom (60%) is Heinz.

Tomato ketchup is often used as a condiment to various dishes that are usually served hot: French fries, hamburgers, hot sandwiches, hot dogs, meat pies, cooked eggs, and grilled or fried meat. Ketchup is sometimes used as the basis for, or an ingredient in, other sauces and dressings, and it is also used as an additive flavoring for snacks like potato chips.

In the 17th century, the Chinese mixed a concoction of pickled fish and spices and called it (in the Amoy dialect) kôe-chiap or kê-chiap (鮭汁, Mandarin Chinese guī zhī, Cantonese gwai¹ zap¹) meaning the brine of pickled fish (鮭, salmon; 汁, juice) or shellfish. By the early 18th century, the table sauce had made it to the Malay states (present day Malaysia and Singapore), where it was tasted by English colonists. The Indonesian-Malay word for the sauce was kecap (pronounced "kay-chap"). That word evolved into the English word "ketchup". English settlers then took ketchup with them to the American colonies.