Catsup vs Ketchup - Difference and Comparison

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Catsup

Ketchup

Currently 3.33/5
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Rating: 3.3/5 (51 votes)

Currently 4.52/5
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Rating: 4.5/5 (79 votes)

What is it?:

A condiment

Primary ingredients:

Tomato, onion, salt, cinnamon

Popularly used in:

Some parts of US, Latin America, Mexico

Most parts of the world.

Taste:

Generally sweet and tangy but sometimes spicy

Generally sweet, tangy

Both Ketchup and Catsup are condiments usually made with ripened tomatoes. It is often said that though coming from the same ingredients Ketchup is just a more popular version of Catsup. It is also said that what is Ketchup in most countries is catsup in some parts of the US.

1 Origin of word
2 History
3 Ingredients
4 Reference

[edit] Origin of word

The word ketchup is derived from the Chinese ke-tsiap, a pickled fish sauce. It made its way to Malaysia where it became kechap and ketjap in Indonesia. Catsup and catchup are acceptable spellings used interchangably with ketchup, however, ketchup is the way it is popularly used. “Catsup,” which dates to the same time, may well be a different Romanization of the same word, trying to come closer to a sound that doesn’t really exist in English.

In the 1800s, “ketchup” was most common in Britain and “catsup” was most common in the US for reasons unknown. The two words never really canceled each other out because in their formative years, there weren’t spelling dictionaries choosing a “correct” version of words. (Many Americans pronounced “catsup” the same as “ketchup” in any case.) Today, “ketchup” is the dominant term in both countries, though “catsup” still has its strongholds, especially in the southern US.

[edit] History

Seventeenth century English sailors first discovered the delights of the "sauce", a Chinese condiment and brought it to the west. Ketchup was first mentioned in print around 1690. The Chinese version is actually more akin to a soy or Worcestershire sauce.
It gradually went through various changes, particularly with the addition of tomatoes in the 1700s. By the nineteenth century, ketchup was also known as tomato soy. Early tomato versions were much thinner with a consistency more like a soy or Worcestershire sauce. F. & J. Heinz Company began selling tomato ketchup in 1876. By the end of the nineteenth century, tomato ketchup was the primary type of ketchup in the United States, and the decriptor of tomato was gradually dropped.

[edit] Ingredients

The basic ingredients in modern ketchup are tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon. Onions, celery, and other vegetables are frequent additions. Catsup may be made of tomatoes, onions, cayenne, sugar, white vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, celery seed and salt. So the two do not differ much in their ingredients. But different manufacturers may use different ingredients for the two. Sometimes Catsup may be more spicy than Ketchup.

Catsup is known to most experts to use higher quality tomatoes. This fact is not known to most Consumers, and they blindly purchase the inferior ketchup more often.