The Australians and tomato sauce

"Tomato sauce’ is fair dinkum Aussie, while ‘ketchup’ is an American intrusion to be resisted. Will this become a selling point?"

Daniel Midgley - Good Reason

I actually was going to write about the origins of ketchup, as my grandson asked me where it came from last night as he ate his sausage in a roll. Yes I am a terrible grandmother feeding him such rubbish but he's a tiny bit difficult and choosy and I was feeling lazy. We are all sinners sometimes.

Anyway I had to admit that I didn't know and so we Googled it and found that most likely ketchup originated in China from whence it went to Malaysia and Singapore - via slight changes in language and also in ingredients, was taken up by the British colonists who took it home. It seems to originally have been some kind of fish sauce. Originally also, in England at least, it was made from mushrooms not tomatoes. And I do think that, all in all, tomato ketchup as we know it today is most likely American.

But, of course, here in Australia we call it tomato sauce and it is all invasive. I saw one article which said that the writer put it on the table with the salt and pepper for every meal. Indeed when I came to Australia I was somewhat taken aback and appalled at the ubiquity of it all.

And the bottle that it came in - like the one on the left was always begrimed with drying tomato sauce around the nozzle. Surely not healthy. And some of the ways it was used did not appeal. The pie for example - you hold the bottle downwards, make a hole in the pie with a nozzle and squeeze - so that you get something like the picture at the top of the page. Ugh!

But the Australians are very, very patriotic about this as became obvious when Heinz (an American company) decided to try and convince Australians that tomato ketchup is the way to go. Dick Smith said it was 'disrespectful' to Australian culture. Whatever he thought though, Heinz seems determined to move its labelling to tomato ketchup rather than sauce. It's what my grandson had last night. So if he, a very choosy seven year old is happy to have it then I'm sure that eventually Australians will too. Heinz claim it's thicker than tomato sauce. "Thicker is tastier" is the line.

Matt Young of News.com tried to find out the difference between bottled ketchup and sauce but found it extremely hard.

"When I asked Heinz to comment, I never got an answer. Same goes for Masterfoods. Masterchef’s Matt Preston is overseas and even the CSIRO told me to Google it". Matt Young - News.com.au

He also posted lists of the ingredients in the two products from Heinz. I think they do both.

"The ingredient list on a bottle of regular Heinz ketchup is as follows: Concentrated Tomatoes (Contains 206g of Tomatoes per 100mL), Sugar, Salt, Concentrated White Vinegar, Food Acid (Citric Acid), Natural Flavours (Contain Garlic), Spice. Contains 77% Concentrated Tomatoes.

The ingredient list on a bottle of regular Heinz tomato sauce is as follows: Tomatoes (148g per 100g Tomato Ketchup), Spirit Vinegar, Sugar, Salt, Spice and Herb Extracts (Contain Celery), Spice." Matt Young. News.com.au

Oh and by the way at least 25% of one of these products is sugar. Anyway - yes maybe the ketchup has a few more tomatoes and might indeed be thicker. A rather nice aside is that apparently Heinz has had such a hard job converting Australians to tomato ketchup that it has closed its factory here and moved to New Zealand. But the final blow was from the ABC.

"In 2012, the company closed its local ketchup factory, after 70 years of existence, and moved its production to New Zealand. In a final indignity, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported the news as “Heinz tomato sauce factory closes.” Tedium

Me - I have never been a fan of the commercial bottled tomato sauce. I was brought up on OK sauce - a kind of HP sauce, - spicier and tangier. And of course I make my own Italian kind of tomato sauce if it's needed. Why would you not? And bottled passata is better too.

Anything other than that revolting stuff the Australians are so protective of and seem to put on everything.