Ketchup comes from the Hokkien Chinese word, kê-tsiap, the name of a sauce derived from fermented fish. It is believed that traders brought fish sauce from Vietnam to southeastern China.
The British likely encountered ketchup in Southeast Asia, returned home, and tried to replicate the fermented dark sauce. This probably happened in the late 17th and early 18th centuries as evidenced by a recipe published in 1732 for “Ketchup in Paste,” by Richard Bradley, which referenced “Bencoulin in the East-Indies” as its origin. (See “
How a Food Becomes Famous.”)
But this was certainly
not the ketchup we would recognize today. Most British recipes called for ingredients like mushrooms, walnuts, oysters, or anchovies in an effort to reproduce the savory tastes first encountered in Asia. Mushroom ketchup was even a purported favorite of Jane Austen. These early ketchups were mostly thin and dark, and were often added to soups, sauces, meat and fish. At this point, ketchup lacked one important ingredient.
Wiley partnered with a Pittsburgh man named Henry J. Heinz who had started producing ketchup in 1876. Heinz was also convinced American consumers did not want chemicals in their ketchup. In answer to the benzoate controversy, Heinz developed a recipe that used ripe, red tomatoes—which have more of the natural preservative called pectin than the scraps other manufacturers used—and dramatically increased the amount of vinegar and to reduce risk of spoilage. Heinz began producing preservative-free ketchup, and soon dominated the market. In 1905, the company had sold five million bottles of ketchup.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/food/the-plate/2014/04/21/how-was-ketchup-invented/
