When asked what my favourite food group is, the answer is always the same: condiments. If asked what my favourite condiment is, the answer is resoundingly ketchup. Surely ketchup fulfills all the requirements of a great food: rich colour and texture, sweet yet tangy, a good source of vitamin C and antioxidant, and above all, versatile.

            It is therefore surprising that in light of my love affair with this stellar food and my affinity for condiments, I have never attempted to make my own. It was due only to a cooking faux pas — I neglected to read the entire recipe — I discovered I could make my own variation.

            A friend had given me a big bowl of tomatoes, fresh from her garden. They were quite ripe and would need to be canned or frozen. I became a bit nostalgic, and memories of my mother canning jars of chili sauce every fall came to mind. I remembered the enticing scent of clove, cinnamon and allspice that lingered in the house for days after.

            I know I have Mom’s recipe somewhere here, but at just that moment, late at night and far later in Ontario, I couldn’t put my finger on it. I went searching for a recipe that would suit the meagre number of tomatoes I had and woeful lack of onion and green pepper. I finally found a recipe in one of those coffee-table books: lovely to look at but don’t try to cook from one. I found what seemed to be a close approximation of the recipe I remembered, but what the heck was a peck? I had a plastic colander full! I forged ahead, making some rather subjective measurement conversions. I became sceptical that I was headed in the right direction when I ended up with a huge pan of juice and some tomato chunks. There was no way that I would get even one jar of chili sauce from this. Then I read the next step in this recipe:

            “Drain thoroughly and place in a large, heavy saucepan.” The recipe wanted me to drain off all of the juice and proceed on with the one cup diced tomato I would have left. Time for Plan B: Do what Jordan had suggested in the first place, reduce the juice to make a paste that I could freeze in small batches.

            I was still determined to can something and after tossing the pretty picture book, I went looking in the place I should have gone in the first place, my tattered copy of The Joy of Cooking. I tried to find ketchup in the index but apparently the author had never heard of Mr. Heinz, and spelled the word “catsup.” I also discovered that I owned a book on preserving, but of a dozen recipes for ketchup, only one used tomatoes. There were plum, mushroom, walnut and even lobster ketchups.  And here I thought that the whole world revolved around tomato ketchup!

            The word ketchup— or catsup— comes from the Indonesian word ketsiap, which means a tasty sauce. But you won’t find any tomatoes in this sauce. It consists of a salty fish base with a variety of spices. It wasn’t until the late 1700s that Americans started adding tomatoes. The Heinz Company made tomato ketchup famous when they added it to their product line in the late 1800s.

            Traditional British ketchup also begins with a salty fish base, normally anchovies, but uses either walnuts or mushrooms for the main ingredient.          

 Whether the sauce is made with mushrooms, plums or lobster, the defining seasonings are vinegar, clove and allspice. The fruit ketchups, which include tomato, also will likely contain cinnamon and lots of sugar.

            I was finally able to use the old Foley food mill that I had picked up in an antique store, not because I ever thought that I would be using this applesauce maker, as we always called it, but because it reminded me of my Grandmother making applesauce. It was perfect for pressing out every last drop of juice and pulp from those tomatoes.

            It took several hours of simmering, but finally I was able to see my soup reduced to a thick sauce, and the comforting scent of cinnamon and clove filled the house. I only made enough for six small jars, but at least I hadn’t wasted a drop of that precious juice.

We don’t eat many potatoes around here anymore, but good ketchup makes an easy sauce to bake tofu or chicken wings in. My ketchup might possibly even come close to my favourite homemade ketchup which can only be found in a bright-orange french fry stand on the beach in Port Stanley, Ontario, called Mackie’s. I’d save up all of my french fry points for a year, just to be able to enjoy a cup of their homemade chips with that great ketchup.