Few people know that the common name for all varieties of tomato sauce popular today - ketchup did not initially imply the presence of a tomato in it. And the birthplace of seasoning with this name is China.
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If we make claims to ketchup, in which fruit mashed potatoes make up a large share, then a purely tomato product should also be criticized. Indeed, one of the most popular modern food products - ketchup was originally a sauce of seafood and salt.
Is ketchup an invention of the Chinese or Malays?
Scientists claim that the English language, which occupies a leading position today as a means of international communication, actually includes more than 500 other languages. Mostly this confusion occurred as a result of trade and attempts by the British to expand their territorial possessions. It is known that in the Middle Ages, the Malay market language - pidgin was generally accepted in eastern India and in southwest Malaysia.
Merchants from Western Europe by any means tried to punch their way there, since many spices, including black pepper, were equivalent to international currency. First, Arabs, Dutch, Portuguese, and then, in the XVIII century, and the British deliberately deprived Indian merchants of their "tidbit." The possession of the UK became several islands, among which were Singapore and Penang. Therefore, it is not surprising that many words of the Malay language did not enter English directly, but through the Dutch and Portuguese languages.
Linguists agree that the English ketchup is a derivative of the Malay kechap, which, most likely, was borrowed from the Chinese dialect, because in the territory of modern Malaysia there are many ethnic groups that speak Chinese. Whether the ketchup got to the British from Malaysia or from China, on the territory of which the British East India Company, which was created back in 1600, also encroached, is now difficult to establish. But the fact that the Chinese have been making a sauce called koe-chiap or koe-tsiap for millennia is an absolute truth.
The first part of this complex combination translates as "salmon or salmon" (in other words, fish), and the second - brine. In an ancient recipe from 554, no spices are listed except salt. To prepare the fish sauce, it is recommended to take not even the fish itself, but its insides: the intestines, the bladders of yellow fish (mullet, shark). The washed ingredients must be salt and left in a tightly closed container for 20 days in the sun. In the cold season, cooking took three times as much time.