The fishy Chinese origin of the word "ketchup"
Long before it was a tomato-based condiment on American burgers, ketchup was a dark, salty fish sauce from southern China. In the 17th century, British traders in Southeast Asia encountered a fermented fish sauce known in the Hokkien Chinese dialect as 鮭汁 (kôe-chiap, pronounced "kway-chyap"). They loved it, brought the recipe home, and spent centuries adapting it with walnuts, oysters, and eventually tomatoes.
The Maritime Roots of the Name
Today, ketchup is almost universally understood as a sweet, tangy, tomato-based condiment poured over fries and burgers. Yet the word itself points to a vastly different culinary tradition thousands of miles away from Western fast-food culture. Linguists and culinary historians trace the term back to southern China, specifically the Hokkien dialect spoken across the coastal province of Fujian and widely used by Chinese merchants throughout Southeast Asian trading ports.
In Hokkien, the sauce was recorded as 鮭汁, pronounced in various transliterations as kôe-chiap or kê-chiap. In this dialect, the first character referred to preserved or pickled fish, while the second character meant brine, juice, or sauce. When English and Dutch sailors visited trading hubs like Malacca, Batavia, and Canton during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they encountered this dark, savory liquid used to flavor rice and fish dishes, and they began carrying both the sauce and its name back home.
The Original Fermented Condiment
The original condiment bore almost no resemblance to modern red ketchup. Southern Chinese cooks prepared it through the long, slow fermentation of fish entrails, whole small fish, and soybeans mixed with substantial amounts of salt. Over months in large earthen vats, natural enzymes broke down the proteins, yielding an amber-to-dark liquid packed with savory glutamates. It was thin, intensely salty, and aromatic—a direct relative of modern East Asian fish sauces like Vietnamese nước mắm and Thai nam pla.
For maritime merchants, this sauce was not merely a flavor enhancer; it was exceptionally practical. The high salt content made it nearly imperishable, allowing it to survive long sea voyages without spoiling. British sailors found that a small splash could revive the dull, salted provisions served aboard ships. Intrigued by its potency and longevity, Western travelers began purchasing barrels of the liquid to transport back to Europe, where domestic cooks soon attempted to replicate it.