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Ketchup vs Mustard

No change in size, 11:48, 25 June 2020
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What's most curious here is the explanation that ketchup was "something aking akin to Kabul sauce". If you're wondering what that was, it's, well, something akin to ketchup – hot tomato sauce seasoned with garlic and chilli, named after the Afghan capital, produced in Britain since the 19th century and particularly popular in the Russian Empire (for example, as one of the original ingredients of the classic Russian ''olivye'' salad), including the Russian partition of Poland. One of the characters in ''The Doll'', a great Polish novel by Bolesław Prus that is set in Russian Poland, speculated that if "the year 1879 began with a victory in Afghanistan for the British, who entered Kabul under General [Frederick] Roberts", then "no doubt Kabul sauce will get dearer!"<ref>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Prus
| imię = Bolesław
| rok = 2013
| strony = 270
}}</ref> apparently believing that "hot dogs with ketchup" would have been completely alien to the Polish youth. It was only at the end of the 1970s that Poland's Communist authorities allowed a degree of private enterprise in the catering industry. This move quickly led to small family-owned foodservice food-service establishments, known as "small gastronomy", mushrooming all over the country. They usually took the form of little stands or travel trailers turned food trucks selling grilled sausages, French fries, hot dogs and ''zapiekanki'' (the Polish answer to hot dogs, that is, baguettes topped with mushrooms and melted cheese), all covered with ample doses of tomato ketchup. Or "ketchuk" as some of the patrons, still unfamiliar with the condiment, mispronounced it.<ref>{{Cyt
| tytuł = TVP Info
| rozdział = Zapiekanki z&nbsp;„keczukiem” wprost z&nbsp;przyczepy kempingowej: Początki małej gastronomii
}}</ref> The 1980s in Poland also saw the rise of grill parties (patterned on American BBQ), which would soon grow into a national pastime.
After that, it wasn't long before Polish people fell in love with ketchup's sweet taste. And even though tomato is now the only veriety variety many of them can imagine, you can still find the seemingly tautological "tomato ketchup" on some labels. Which allowed for a nice wordplay in a 1997 commercial; its tagline literally meant "whatever tomato has, ketchup has it too", which in Polish goes like this:
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