The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [45]
At long last, thirty-five ketchups were lined up on our kitchen counter.
“Let the games begin,” my wife said as we walked into our neighborhood McDonald’s. Next to the deep fryers is a bin where cooked potatoes languish under heat lamps until somebody orders them, by which time they may taste like cardboard. So we stood unobtrusively in the condiment and napkin area and waited and watched. When the holding bin was nearly empty and the assistant manager had dropped some fresh potatoes into the deep fryer, we rushed up to the counter and requested ten large orders of fries. A few minutes later we were walking back home with our crispy treasures.
Ten large orders of French fries may be the precise number you need to sample and evaluate thirty-five ketchups. But what we had failed to anticipate is that eating anywhere near this number of French fries slathered with ketchup is nearly impossible. And as the minutes drew on into hours, we became increasingly confused about which ketchups we preferred and why. I remember reading somewhere that a human being is incapable of comparing more than seven things at one time. Two human beings working as a team are no more capable.
Our solution was to assign each ketchup to one of four general categories: Worse Than Heinz, Heinz, Better Than Heinz, and Not Really Ketchup. Both Alexander Hunter’s Tomata Sauce (1804), properly reduced, and our very own Olde-Tyme Homemade Ketchup (1992) usually but not always found themselves in the Better Than Heinz category. If you would like to experience some alternative ketchups yourself, here are our tasting notes (with the New York City sources and prices):
• A&P Tomato Ketchup, 14 ounces for $.77. Good, often seemed Better Than Heinz, with a deeper taste. But overly assertive clove flavor.
• Beyond Catsup, Jasmine & Bread, 9 ounces for $6.00. The V-8 juice of ketchups, with assertive celery notes. But not bad.
• Blanchard & Blanchard New England Chunky Ketchup (Extra Spicy), 12 ounces for $2.49. Very tasty, but more like the dreaded salsa, chunky and thick. Does nothing for French fries.
• Busha Browne’s Spicy Tomato Love-Apple Sauce, 6.5 ounces for $4.50 at Balducci’s. Tiny little chunks with a fermented, almost fetid, flavor, like the ancestral Asian ketchup: more like a roughly pureed chutney, my least favorite flavor in the whole world.
• Del Monte Ketchup, 17 ounces for $.99 at Sloan’s. Sometimes Better Than Heinz, sometimes not; less sticky, less tendency to coat the teeth. But slightly overcooked, caramelized taste.
• Fancy Tomato Catsup, from the Food Emporium, 14 ounces for $.77. Seems identical to A&P’s house brand, above.
• Featherweight Catsup Reduced Calorie, from Infiniti Health Food, 13 ounces for $2.35. Anybody who would choose a brand of ketchup to save calories is crazy. But this one has a nice, bright taste, though too much vinegar.
• Foodtown Catsup, 14 ounces for $.73 at D’Agostino’s. Tastes like A&P’s; see above.
• Hain Natural Catsup, 14 ounces for $2.85 at Infiniti Health Food. Naturally and simply awful. Sweetened with the bitterness of honey, foolishly unsalted.
• Heinz Hot Ketchup, 14 ounces for $1.29 at Gristede’s. Slightly tangy. Sometimes seemed Better Than Heinz, though the official contest rules do not allow this.
• Heinz Lite Ketchup, 13.25 ounces for $1.29 at Gristede’s. Who needs lite ketchup with half the calories and one-third less salt? Identical to Weight Watchers, below, but priced lite-r, at 25 percent less.
• Heinz Tomato Ketchup, 28 ounces for $2.19 at D’Agostino’s. The one and only. Bright color, thick but a bit sticky, quite sweet; less taste than homemade but with a good, fruity acidity, some tomato taste: unassertive and uninteresting spices. With French fries, a marriage