06/05/2026
It’s National Ketchup Day! 🍅
Did you know Thomas Jefferson was one of the first in the United States to cultivate the tomato (and legitimize the fruit?) One of the earliest recipes for “tomato catsup” appeared in the New Art of Cookery (1792) by Richard Brigg (link in bio to see the cookbook which has been digitized!).
By the mid-1800s, tomatoes and their purees had become popular, but preparing ketchup at home was time consuming. It’s no wonder that Americans embraced the first mass produced bottles of ketchup in the late 1860s. These chefs and businessmen, among those like Henry J. Heinz, would go on to produce a wide range of pickles, relishes, and other preserves for sale.
Just like you can’t have enough of the condiment, today we thought we’d over-indulge with our printed ephemera items related to the pantry staple:
🥫1. Uncataloged items which are part of the Stephen Davies Paine collection of ephemera gifted to the society last year (including images of the Heinz and Hazard & Co. factories AND the version of ketchup that comes decanted 💅),
🥫2. A collection of food labels for ketchup lithographed by Boston-based Louis Prang and Company for the “Boston Market” company in New Jersey (that gold on the labels 😍!!!); the sheet contains uncut product labels designed to go on the actual bottles of the product.
🥫3-5. The final item is a metamorphic advertising card for the Shrewsbury Tomato ketchup company; it was produced by the E.C. Hazard Company after 1870. We’ve included her asleep, awake, dreaming, and for those truly interested, the reverse. We can confirm the trade card must be held up the light for its before and after effect. The graphics printed on the reverse show through the thin paper to reveal the woman waking to a bottle of floating ketchup (?): “There is no vice so simply but assumes some mark of virtue in its outward part” (for those keeping score virtuous = ketchup 💪). What color ketchup do you dream in?
[In Heinz-sight 🥁 we probably should have posted these separately because they're so rich!]
