These were designed to differ in every conceivable way: spiciness, sweetness, tartness, saltiness, thickness, aroma, mouth feel, cost of ingredients, and so forth. He had a trained panel of food tasters analyze each of those varieties in depth. Then he took the prototypes on the road—to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Jacksonville—and asked people in groups of twenty-five to eat between eight and ten small bowls of different spaghetti sauces over two hours and rate them on a scale of one to a hundred.
When Moskowitz charted the results, he saw that everyone had a slightly different definition of what a perfect spaghetti sauce tasted like.
Because at the time there was no extra-chunky spaghetti sauce in the supermarket. Over the next decade, that new category proved to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Prego. So in about we launched Prego extra-chunky. It was extraordinarily successful. It may be hard today, fifteen years later—when every brand seems to come in multiple varieties—to appreciate how much of a breakthrough this was.
In those years, people in the food industry carried around in their heads the notion of a platonic dish—the version of a dish that looked and tasted absolutely right. Cooking, on the industrial level, was consumed with the search for human universals. Once you start looking for the sources of human variability, though, the old orthodoxy goes out the window. Howard Moskowitz stood up to the Platonists and said there are no universals. Moskowitz still has a version of the computer model he used for Prego fifteen years ago.
It has all the coded results from the consumer taste tests and the expert tastings, split into the three categories plain, spicy, and extra-chunky and linked up with the actual ingredients list on a spreadsheet. Look, every variable is here.
I want to optimize one of the segments. He typed in a few commands, instructing the computer to give him the formulation that would score the highest with those people in Segment 1. They scored it 67 and 57, respectively. Moskowitz started again, this time asking the computer to optimize for Segment 2. This time the ratings came in at 82, but now Segment 1 had fallen ten points, to But if I do the sensory segmentation, I can get 70, 71, Is that big? But there is theory and there is practice.
By the end of that long day, Wigon had sold ninety jars. It is possible, of course, that ketchup is waiting for its own version of that Rolls-Royce commercial, or the discovery of the ketchup equivalent of extra-chunky—the magic formula that will satisfy an unmet need.
Tomato ketchup is a nineteenth-century creation—the union of the English tradition of fruit and vegetable sauces and the growing American infatuation with the tomato.
But what we know today as ketchup emerged out of a debate that raged in the first years of the last century over benzoate, a preservative widely used in late-nineteenth-century condiments.
Harvey Washington Wiley, the chief of the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture from to , came to believe that benzoates were not safe, and the result was an argument that split the ketchup world in half. On one side was the ketchup establishment, which believed that it was impossible to make ketchup without benzoate and that benzoate was not harmful in the amounts used. On the other side was a renegade band of ketchup manufacturers, who believed that the preservative puzzle could be solved with the application of culinary science.
The dominant nineteenth-century ketchups were thin and watery, in part because they were made from unripe tomatoes, which are low in the complex carbohydrates known as pectin, which add body to a sauce. But what if you made ketchup from ripe tomatoes, giving it the density it needed to resist degradation?
Nineteenth-century ketchups had a strong tomato taste, with just a light vinegar touch. The renegades argued that by greatly increasing the amount of vinegar, in effect protecting the tomatoes by pickling them, they were making a superior ketchup: safer, purer, and better tasting.
They offered a money-back guarantee in the event of spoilage. They charged more for their product, convinced that the public would pay more for a better ketchup, and they were right. The benzoate ketchups disappeared. The leader of the renegade band was an entrepreneur out of Pittsburgh named Henry J. Smith, a substantial man, well over six feet, with a graying mustache and short wavy black hair.
Smith is a scholar, trained as a political scientist, intent on bringing rigor to the world of food. Was the croissant invented in , by the Viennese, in celebration of their defeat of the invading Turks? Or in , by the residents of Budapest, to celebrate their defeat of the Turks?
Both explanations would explain its distinctive crescent shape—since it would make a certain cultural sense particularly for the Viennese to consecrate their battlefield triumphs in the form of pastry.
But the only reference Smith could find to either story was in the Larousse Gastronomique of The Italians substituted the tomato for eggplant. In northern India, it went into curries and chutneys. But it is now. You can taste the tomato. It was inexpensive, which meant that it had a firm lock on the mass market, and it was a condiment, not an ingredient, which meant that it could be applied at the discretion of the food eater, not the food preparer.
There are five known fundamental tastes in the human palate: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. It turns a soup from salt water into a food. Then he dramatically increased the concentration of vinegar, so that his ketchup had twice the acidity of most other ketchups; now ketchup was sour, another of the fundamental tastes. The post-benzoate ketchups also doubled the concentration of sugar—so now ketchup was also sweet—and all along ketchup had been salty and bitter. A second included pepper, ginger, mustard seed, celery salt, horseradish, and brown sugar.
The recipe I tested includes similar ingredients. While I admit my end result tastes nothing like Heinz that rich texture is hard to achieve , it is still quite delicious. More savory than sweet, it packs a bit of heat that mellows with time after canning. Today, the world of condiments is metamorphosing with the rise of alternative and artisanal ketchups and the ever-increasing popularity of my personal favorite condiment, Sriracha.
What is? Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until translucent, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute, while stirring. Add the tomatoes, salt, paprika, cinnamon, cloves, celery salt, cumin, dry mustard, chili powder, and ground pepper and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes.
Blend until smooth with an immersion blender or transfer the mixture to an upright blender in two batches and puree until smooth. If transferred, return the mixture to the pot.
Add vinegars, brown sugar, and honey. Cook over medium heat, uncovered, stirring often, until the ketchup thickens, about 30 minutes.
Adjust salt, pepper, and chili powder to taste. All rights reserved. It is a dynamic red concoction. At once savory and sweet, with just the right amount of puckering twang, it is slathered and squirted onto our favorite foods. Share Tweet Email. Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants. This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city Caracals have learned to hunt around the urban edges of Cape Town, though the predator faces many threats, such as getting hit by cars.
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