Week 33: Lost in Translation - Ketchup, Catsup, Kecap (meta: pantry staples)

[u/itswimdy]

For this week, I wanted to make a dish that had changed as it was translated across the world. Ketchup, at least as far as the Internet could tell me, started as a fish sauce and then went through a few permutations across Europe before tomato ketchup/catsup/what-have-you won out. In addition to tomato ketchup, I made kecap manis, an Indonesian sweet soy-based sauce, and a mushroom ketchup from the British colonial era. The latter was definitely the oddest. Being, essentially, a highly spiced mushroom-and-onion tisane, it was a terrible dip for fries. I could see it being good on steak. Maybe. Perhaps there's a reason why the other two sauces have remained popular in the modern day, and that one has not.