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The mustard plant, which looks quite similar to rapeseed (or what North Americans call "``canola") with its bright-yellow flowers, produces seeds with a very specific taste. But what taste exactly? The plant’s Polish name, "''``gorczyca"''" suggests bitterness ("''``goryczka"''"). But chew a few seeds and you’ll notice that they are actually sweetish and very piquant, but not exactly bitter. So where did the plant get its Polish name from? Most likely from the verb "''``gorzeć"''", "``to burn"; apparently, both bitterness and the taste of raw mustard seeds were formerly described as a burning sensation.

Mustard seeds come in three varieties: white, brown and black. In fact, the brown and black ones are more closely related to cabbage that to the white mustard, but let’s leave the botanical taxonomy aside and just continue to refer to all three as "``mustard".

But wait, what did he mean by "``tree"? Mustard is an annual plant, it doesn’t grow more than 60 cm tall. Did Jesus get confused or was he misquoted by Luke or mistranslated by Bible scholars?

Anyway, ancient Romans found out that mustard seeds’ sharp taste may be somewhat blunted by mixing them with sour-tasting grape must. They called this mixture "``burning must", or "''``mustum ardens"''" in Latin, which, as you may have guessed, is where the English word "``mustard" comes from. This condiment survived the fall of the Roman Empire and was quite commonplace in medieval Europe. By that time, however, the must would have been usually replaced with verjuice (unripe-grape juice), wine (the famous Dijon mustard, for example, still has some white wine added to it) or vinegar.

As you can see, even back then Polish people knew quite a&nbsp;few mustard varieties, perhaps even more than the typical modern choice of deli, "``French", "``Russian", brown, horseradish and honey mustards that you can buy in any Polish supermarket. In Stanisław Czerniecki’s ''Compendium Ferculorum'', the oldest printed cookbook in Polish, there’s only one recipë for this "''``niepospolity condiment"''", or "``uncommon condiment" (it calls for mustard seeds, wine, vinegar, pears, raisins and sugar),<ref>{{Cyt

As new mustard recipës were being developed, so did novel ways to serve the mustard on the table in an elegant way. You may remember [[Epic_Cooking:_The_Last_Old_Polish_Feast#The_Centrepiece_Masterpiece|Adam Mickiewicz's poetic description of the elaborate centrepiece of Soplicowo]]. According to Jędrzej Kitowicz, an indispensable element of such a&nbsp;centrepiece were spherical receptacles he called "``bubbles", sitting snugly in metal rings welded to vertical parts of the structure.

In August last year, a&nbsp;Polish news portal published an article entitled [https://finanse.wp.pl/truskawkowy-keczup-od-firmy-wloclawek-internauci-w-szoku-6412050532366465a "``Strawberry Ketchup from Włocławek: Internet Users in Shock".] As usual in modern journalism, the article was based entirely on two tweets. [https://twitter.com/michaljadczak/status/1160165241117970432 One of them,] by Mr. Michał Jadczak, contained a&nbsp;picture of two red plastic bottles with labels reading, in Polish, "``Ketchup with strawberries" and "``Ketchup with red currants". The picture was captioned: "``Scandal! Sacrilege! The end is nigh..:/". In their comments, many Twitter users expressed their dismay at someone’s nerve to adulterate ketchup with fruits of plants other than tomato. Some linked this scandal to the momentous fact that Włocławek-brand ketchup was actually no longer made in the town of Włocławek (pronounced: {{pron|vWawts|Wah|vek}}).

Ketchup began its career somewhere in Southeast Asia as… fish sauce. It was originally made by salting fish blood and innards, as well as whole fish that were too small for any other use, and leaving the whole mess to pickle. The smell must have been overwhelming, but only at the beginning of the process. As the mixture was fermenting, the scent and the taste were becoming milder and more palatable. The liquid thus obtained was a&nbsp;natural source of monosodium glutamate; in other words, a&nbsp;kind of ancient Maggi seasoning. In the Chinese dialect spoken in northern Vietnam, this sauce was called "''``kê-tsiap"''".

But by the time the English could first sample something the locals in Indonesia referred to as "''``kecap"''", this word had already expanded its meaning to cover all kinds of sauces; in fact, modern Indonesians use it mostly when talking about soy sauce. The English borrowed the word and used it for condiments that were meant to last long, as opposed to sauces, which were prepared just before a&nbsp;meal. Ketchup, or catsup, could be bottled and stored for months or even years. One 18th-century British cookbook contains a&nbsp;recipë "``to make ketch-up that will keep twenty years".<ref>{{Cyt

By the 18th century, ketchup had become a&nbsp;familiar condiment throughout the British Empire. Jonathan Swift, known especially as the author of ''Gulliver's Travels'', gave "``catsup" as an example of "``home-bred British" food, as opposed to French "``soups and fricassees", in one of his satirical poems. He mentioned catsup in the same line as caviar and the aforementioned botargo, which shows that it was still classified as seafood.

Ketchup could have been made from almost anything, so it was just a&nbsp;matter of time until someone got the idea of making ketchup out of tomatoes. But who? The tomato plant isn’t native to either Indonesia or the British Isles. Long after the first specimens were brought from America, Europeans were still apprehensive about it, because it reminded them of deadly nightshade, henbane bell and other related, highly toxic plants. It follows that tomato ketchup was invented on the same continent the tomato comes from. At the turn of the 19th century, tomato ketchup was already a&nbsp;popular condiment in the newly established United States of America. Just like other ketchups, it was enhanced by the addition of vinegar, spices and, starting in the 1840s, sugar (which also played the role of a&nbsp;preservative). Ketchup was starting to taste like it does today. And what did it look like? Old varieties of tomato were yellow (hence its Italian name, "''``pomo d'oro"''", or "``golden apple", which has been borrowed into Polish and a&nbsp;few other languages). And ketchup was often strained and filtered, so it was a&nbsp;runny yellowish liquid rather than a&nbsp;thick red sauce.

It took a&nbsp;long time for the Polish people to learn what ketchup is and even longer for them to acquire a&nbsp;taste for it. First advertisements for "``wallnut ketchup", an exotic sauce imported from Britain, started to appear in Warsaw newspapers around the middle of the 19th century.

I think it’s a&nbsp;great loss to Polish vocabulary that the word he coined, "''``kwasób"''" (pronounced: {{pron|kfah|soop}}, from "''``kwas"''", "``sour"), has never caught on. Instead, Polish people are stuck with a&nbsp;poorly adopted borrowing on which they can’t even agree how to spell ("``ketchup" or "``keczup"?) nor how to read ({{pron|keh|choop}} or {{pron|keh|chahp}}?), and which remained quite obscure well into the 20th century. A&nbsp;Polish-English phrasebook from 1903 translated the menu item "``fried oysters with ketchup" as "''``ostrygi pieczone z&nbsp;rajskimi jabłuszkami"''",<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> which literally means "``roasted oysters with apples of paradise". Apparently, whoever devised the phrasebook was convinced that not only "``ketchup", but even "''``pomidor"''" (the Polish word for "``tomato"), would have been unfamiliar to the average Pole.

The press also published recipës for those who wanted to try making "``a hot tomato sauce, so-called katsup or ketchup",<ref>{{Cyt

}}.<br>The recipë is almost identical to the one for "``catsup" in: {{Cyt

What’s most curious here is the explanation that ketchup was "``something 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&nbsp;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

[[File:Polish {{"}}Zapiekanka{{"}}.jpg|thumb|Polish fast-food hit, a ''zapiekanka'' with a generous squeeze of ketchup]]

Such imperialist novelties as ketchup had hard time getting adopted in postwar Communist Poland, even though, in 1947, the Polish patent office agreed to register the Heinz trademark for an American company which wished to sell the Polish people its "``ketchup (a kind of hot sauce)".<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> In his young-adult novel published in 1960 under the title ''You Shall Become a Red Indian Too'', Wiktor Woroszylski described a&nbsp;typical American delicacy as "``wieners in tomato sauce",<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> apparently believing that "``hot dogs with ketchup" would have been completely incomprehensible to the Polish youth. It was only at the end of the 1970s that Poland’s Communist authorities allowed a&nbsp;degree of private enterprise in the catering industry. This move quickly led to small family-owned 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

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 variety many of them can imagine, you can still find the seemingly tautological "``tomato ketchup" on some labels. Which allowed for a&nbsp;nice wordplay in a&nbsp;1997 commercial; its tagline literally meant "``whatever tomato has, ketchup has it too", which in Polish goes like this:

As I wrote above, mustard used to be rather sweet in the past, so this is what we did: pear-and-gingerbread-flavoured mustard. In Toruń, Poland’s gingerbread capital, you can easily buy [http://www.zasmakujregionu.pl/sosy/129-musztarda-piernikowa-200g.html gingerbread mustard,] and you can find a&nbsp;recipë for "''``grusztarda"''", or pear mustard, in the [https://www.jadlonomia.com/przepisy/grusztarda/ Jadłonomia vegan blog;] but I bet you’ve never had mustard flavoured with both pears and gingerbread before. This is the original historical recipë:

So then we had to peel, core and dice the pears, and then stew them with a&nbsp;little water, while adding small amounts of vinegar to keep it bubbling (we used apple vinegar, but wine vinegar would be best). Once the fruits were soft, I added crushed gingerbread cookies that had been left over from last Christmas. The recipë calls for "``honey cake" and then various spices, but the gingerbread already contained honey and the same spices (cinnamon, cloves, pepper, ginger and cardamom). After this pear-and-gingerbread mixture had cooked down to a&nbsp;homogenous paste (you can hasten the process with a&nbsp;blender) and cooled down, there remained only one more step: combining it with the mustard paste in roughly equal proportion. We also added a&nbsp;pinch of turmeric to give our mustard the familiar mustard-yellow colour (no cheating here; mustards have been dyed yellow with turmeric for ages). We did wait a&nbsp;little for the flavours to develop, but we didn’t wait for the mustard to ferment.