SC - Ham

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Liam Fisher wrote:
> 
> >I'm pretty sure mushroom catsup is an English thang. Also walnut. The
> >south Asian originals would be either made from fish, or, by extension,
> >soybeans.
> 
> Nope, it dates back to the English colonial period.  Catsup is a anglicized
> version of the name of the original.  I forget where I
> read about it and they had something about it on TV about it a while
> ago.  But it is most definitely indian, I just forget the original
> name of the indian dish...it was more like a chutney until it came over here
> to the states and didn't really become a puree until
> late 19thC.

Except that mushroom ketchup isn't a puree at all, but a reduced,
salt-preserved mushroom juice made by heating the mushrooms in a sealed
container. It looks a bit like slightly thickened Worcestershire sauce
(even tastes just a bit like it). It is distinctly briny, and there's
every reason to associate it with ket jap, which in several different
southern Asian dialects means something like "fish brine".

Also, I'm surprised because India is not especially known for a lot of
mushroom dishes. I've heard of one or two dishes, but they may even have
been created outside of India.

Now, there may be an Indian dish of mushrooms cooked to a thick jamlike
stuff, but I don't think that's the original form of what we now call
mushroom ketchup. If it were, why call mushroom ketchup by that name,
evoking fish brine, if there's a more closely related mushroom chutney
under another name? There's just too much evidence to suggest otherwise.
Evidence can be deceiving, of course, but in this case it seems unlikely.

Tomoato ketchup, in spite of its being, in theory, based on tomato
puree, is probably so called because after a while most south Asian
salt-preserved sauces became known, by extension, as ket jap, ranging
from soy sauce of various kinds, to fish sauces, including
Worcestershire, which is really a sort of tamarind/anchovy ket jap, to
others less well known. 

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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