iaink

how do you explain the "No Name" brand Ketchup we buy then?
Ketchup is just another name for Catsup as far as I can tell (and vice versa),
Heinz is a brand name, but I dont think anyone has a right to "Ketchup" as a brand?

willmore

And following that logic.......whiskEy is still whisky....if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck.........

Grah

Question:
What is the difference between "catsup" and "ketchup" ?
Answer:
Well, honestly we don't know. We've tried to find an answer to this one for a long time and haven't been able to come up with anything. The best we've been able to figure out is that it really just boils down to a spelling preference of the company producing the product. In fact, a few years ago, even the makers of Brooks changed the name of their product from "catsup" to "ketchup."


http://www.catsupbottle.com/faqs.html

dawnwynne

Okay...I give!!!

Basically history is like this...many company's made catsup back in the good old days...however when Heinz started offering catsup they called it Ketchup. Now I have no idea why they didn't copyright the name, but obviously they didn't. Until realitively recently many companies still used the spelling catsup for their products and the name Ketchup was used more or less exclusively by Heinz.

However things changed in 1981 as you can see by the following quote from the History of Ketchup website...

"So, what's in a name? Variations such as catsup, catchup, katsup, and others abounded alongside 'ketchup'. However, when the Reagan administration briefly decided to count ketchup as a vegetable in 1981, Del Monte Catsup found itself out of the loop due to their spelling-they permanently changed to 'ketchup', but by then public outcry had forced a reversal of administration policy. Ever since, though, you'll be hard-pressed to find a bottle from any manufacturer labeled anything other than 'ketchup'."

So yes you are technically right...but so am I as most of us old timers remember that Ketchup was always heinz and catsup was all other less superior brands.

Does that sort it out? lol

iaink

Well you learn something new everyday!!!! (see #13)

OK, thread done, I think that we all know far too much about Ketchup/Catsup now.

Where that whisk(e)y

dawnwynne

Lol...couldn't agree more...if anyone had asked me this morning what indepth discussions I would have today...never once would catsup enter my mind

this is for you Iaink...on me...would you like ketchup with that?

iaink

Hmm, dont get me started on the "Caesar"...Drink or Salad in disguise....thats a whole other debate I think!LOL

canucker

I always thought 'catsup' was american...

dawnwynne

Oh Iaink...caesers are wonderful!!!! Or try clamato juice in your beer...so refreshing!!!!

willmore

cc on the rocks is pretty good as well......

stephenbottcher

What you always wanted to know and never bothered to ask:

Quote: World Wide Words - Michael Quinion writes about International English from a British viewpoint

(Q) “Why is ketchup also called catsup?�
(A) Ketchup was one of the earliest names given to this condiment, so spelled in Charles Lockyer’s book of 1711, An Account of the Trade in India: “Soy comes in Tubbs from Jappan, and the best Ketchup from Tonquin; yet good of both sorts are made and sold very cheap in China�. Nobody seems quite sure where it comes from, and I won’t bore you with a long disquisition concerning the scholarly debate on the matter, which is reflected in the varied origins given in major dictionaries. It’s likely to be from a Chinese dialect, imported into English through Malay. The original was a kind of fish sauce, though the modern Malay and Indonesian version, with the closely related name kecap, is a sweet soy sauce.
Like their Eastern forerunners, Western ketchups were dipping sauces. I’m told the first ketchup recipe appeared in Elizabeth Smith’s book The Compleat Housewife of 1727 and that it included anchovies, shallots, vinegar, white wine, sweet spices (cloves, ginger, mace, nutmeg), pepper and lemon peel. Not a tomato in sight, you will note—tomato ketchup was not introduced until about a century later, in the US, and caught on only slowly. It was more usual to base the condiment on mushrooms, or sometimes walnuts.
The confusion about names started even before Charles Lockyer wrote about it, since there is an entry dated 1690 in the Dictionary of the Canting Crew which gives it as catchup, which is another Anglicisation of the original Eastern term. Catchup was used much more in North America than in Britain: it was still common in the middle years of the nineteenth century, as in a story in Scribner’s Magazine in 1859: “I do not object to take a few slices of cold boiled ham ... with a little mushroom catchup, some Worcester sauce, and a pickle or so�. Indeed, catchup continued to appear in American works for some decades and is still to be found on occasion.
There were lots of other spellings, too, of which catsup is the best known, a modification of catchup. You can blame Jonathan Swift for it if you like, since he used it first in 1730: “And, for our home-bred British cheer, Botargo, catsup, and caveer�. [Caveer is caviar; botargo is a fish-based relish made of the roe of the mullet or tunny.] That form was also once common in the US but is much less so these days, at least on bottle labels: all the big US manufacturers now call their product ketchup.


So not every ketchup is Heinz Ketchup.


Stephen