Spicy Banana Ketchup

Before ketchup, there was ke-tsiap, a pickled fish sauce deployed centuries ago in southern China. It made its way to Malaysia and then England, where British voyagers tried to recreate it with the likes of anchovies, mushrooms, oysters, and beer. (Worcestershire is a cousin.) Americans added tomatoes in the early nineteenth century, and by the 1870s this was the standard recipe, codified by the industrialist Henry J. Heinz, whose recipes upped the proportions of vinegar an