Claim A: ketchup was invented as a byproduct of a failed 1800s cough syrup experiment. Claim B: Early American ketchup recipes contained no tomatoes at all and were made from fermented fish. Claim B is the true one — Claim A never happened.
Long before ketchup meant tomatoes, the word described a completely different family of sauces. It traces back to a Chinese fermented fish sauce called ke-tsiap, brought to Southeast Asia by sailors and traders and eventually picked up by British colonists in the region.
British cooks loved the tangy, salty flavor and tried recreating it back home — but without access to the original fish, they experimented wildly. Recipes popped up using mushrooms, walnuts, oysters, and even anchovies, all bottled and sold as "ketchup" with zero tomatoes involved.
Tomato ketchup didn't show up in America until the early 1800s, and it took decades more before it resembled today's thick, sweet version. Early tomato ketchups were actually thin, watery, and often spoiled fast — which is partly why vinegar and sugar got cranked up over time, giving us the shelf-stable stuff we squeeze today.
So for roughly a century, "ketchup" was basically a catch-all word for savory, umami-packed sauces — tomatoes were just one of many contenders, and not even a particularly popular one at first.
As for the cough syrup story — nope, never happened. Ketchup's history has plenty of weird ingredients, but no failed medicine labs are involved. That one's pure fiction dressed up to sound quirky.
Bet you'll never look at a ketchup bottle the same way — go ahead, try to convince a friend which claim was real.
