Over the weekend we made an interesting colonial American recipe. Its from a chapter for sea captains in Hannah Glasse’s 1770 edition of the Art of Cookery. Called Catchup to last Twenty Years, I suspect it is a proto-Worcestershire sauce, used to enhance the flavor of a wide variety of foods. Its made from anchovies, lots of ginger and shallots, mushrooms, mace, cloves and pepper, brewed into a strong, stale beer. The recipe is interesting to me because it has tenuous roots back to the fish sauces of antiquity – like the Phoenician and Carthaginian garum – although this sauce is not salt-fermented.
Right now the taste of the sauce is extremely fishy with a spicy aftertaste. But it is darkening by the day into a rich ruddy brown. Soon I will put it in the cellar and forget about it for a while to see if the taste improves with age. Stay tuned for updates on its development.
Words and photo of Hannah Glasse recipe by Laura M. Kelley
Fascinating! While I am not necessarily a big fan of modern Catchup/Catsup/Ketchup I have always been fascinated by the origins of Catchup since I first learned that the tomato variation is relatively modern. I first saw this particular recipe mentioned on an episode of “A Taste Of History” (Season 3, Episode 3) with Chef Walter Staib, and as soon as he brought it up while cooking something else I was anxious to seem him then make it and provide the recipe. Unfortunately, he didn’t. I then got his cookbook for the series, which DID include the recipe (and then found it as one of the four recipes he lists on the series website as well). His recipe specifically comments: ” Even the modern interpretation of the recipe requires a lot of labor and time”, which really didn’t seem to be reflected in the recipe itself, so I started searching around the web to see if anybody else had any details about this and ran into your (excellent!) blog. Thanks for your additional details and notes, as well as the image of the original printed recipe. I’m going to try scaling back this recipe a bit and give it a go myself.
Thanks! Let us know how it goes and how you like it! We will probably be trying ours again soon. I’m curious to see how it ages. BTW Walter is a talented man and a real gentleman. He and I have had a long conversation about the lack of foreign foods like curries on modern 18th Century menus. He said it all boils down to preconceptions about what early food was like. In short – they don’t sell because people don’t think they are authentic.