There's a fish in my Ketchup!

Ketchup was originally a form of fish sauce. The recipe evolved to be made with many things from berries to mushrooms and eventually tomatoes. I learned about a recipe called Ketchup soup when I was tricked into eating it while working at a museum. The soup was fish based not tomato. I couldn't find the actual recipe but I found something similar from the 1840's. Mace you ask? in my food? Mace is an ingredient that comes from the outer shell of nutmeg. It tastes somewhere between cinnamon and pepper.

Anchovy Catchup

Ingredients

• 24 anchovies
• 10 shalots or very small onions, cut fine
• 1 handful of scraped horseradish
• 1/4 ounce of mace
• 1 lemon, cut into slices
• 12 cloves
• 12 pepper-corns
• 1 pint of red wine
• 1 quart of white wine
• 1 pint of water
• 1/2 pint of anchovy liquor

Instructions

Bone anchovies, and then chop them. Put to them the shalots and horseradish, with mace. Add lemon, cloves, and pepper-corns. Then mix together red wine, white wine, water and anchovy liquor. Put the other ingredients into the liquid, and boil it slowly till reduced to a quart. Then strain it, and when cold put it into small bottles, securing the corks with leather.

Source

Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches (1840).

I found this recipe on an amazing historical food blog called Vintage Recipes you can check it out here http://www.vintagerecipes.net/recipes/sauces_spreads/ketchups/