Into Unscientific

  Chapter 33 The big killer for making money

"ketchup?"

  Beside the bonfire, Maverick looked at the potatoes and tomato sauce in front of him with some hesitation, and asked Xu Yun:

   "Is it the sauce made from tomatoes?"

   "Exactly."

   "But aren't tomatoes poisonous?"

  Hearing Maverick's words, Xu Yun couldn't help laughing:

  "Mr. Newton, everyone says that tomatoes are poisonous, and it is true that some people died from eating tomatoes in history.

   But think about it carefully, who are those people who have had troubles because of eating tomatoes, or what class? "

   "Person? Class?"

  Hearing Xu Yun's words, Xiao Niu was taken aback for a moment, then thought of something, and ran back to the house without saying a word:

   "Wait a minute, I'll go back and get a book."

   After a while.

   Maverick returned to the scene with a book about three centimeters thick, flipping through it as he walked:

   ".William Potter, an agricultural tycoon in Leeds. Milton Bridges, a royal nobleman in Spain. Hisallie Wyatt, a noble daughter of Italy."

   What the calf is holding in his hand is "Herbaceous Flora" by John Gerrard, who is also the chief culprit for keeping tomatoes in the cold in modern Europe.

  He clearly mentioned in the book that 'tomatoes are poisonous and cannot be eaten', so no one in Britain dared to eat tomatoes throughout the 17th century.

  It wasn't until the mid-18th century that the British gradually dared to use tomatoes in daily dishes, and they had to be steamed for a long time to eliminate toxins.

  This book records a large number of examples of poisoning from eating tomatoes, and these examples have become a strong basis for John Gerrard's argument.

'Snapped-'

  After reading more than ten examples, Maverick closed the book and said thoughtfully:

   "Hierarchy."

   After a few seconds, his eyes suddenly lit up:

   "Yes, it's a bit strange. These people seem to be businessmen or dignitaries who don't need money? Why aren't there any civilians?"

  Xu Yun raised a smile at the corner of his mouth, and continued to guide:

   "Mr. Newton, do you think what tableware they use?"

"tableware?"

   Maverick’s eyes drifted slightly to the sky, looked at the moonlight and recalled:

   "It's usually solder. I've seen it a few times at school banquets. When Uncle William was still rich in the early years, he also attended some upper-middle-class parties."

   "Then think again, is there anything in the solder that might react with the tomato?"

   Mavericks had vaguely noticed something at this time, and even before Xu Yun made a prompt, he began to think in the direction of dissolution and reaction:

   "Solder is generally a mixture, basically silver, tin and lead, etc., lead?!"

   He held the book tightly with one hand, raised his head suddenly, and fixed his gaze on Xu Yun:

   "You mean the acid in the tomato dissolves the lead in the solder, which causes the human body to be poisoned and die?!"

  Xu Yun shrugged, didn't speak, everything was in silence.

  Tomato is one of the specialties brought back from America by the Spaniards in the early 16th century.

  It flowed into England at the end of the 16th century, but for a long time, people only regarded tomatoes as ornamental plants and dared not eat them.

   The first reason is that tomatoes belong to the nightshade family, and most nightshade plants contain toxic alkaloids, such as belladonna and datura.

   So back then people believed that tomatoes were also poisonous and one should try to stay away from them.

  But in fact, tomato toxins mainly exist in rhizomes and immature fruits. The alkaloid content of mature tomatoes is already very low, and it will not cause much harm to health at all.

The second reason is the quack doctor John Gerrard mentioned above. In 1597, he wrote the "Herbs and Flora" directly characterizing the tomato as a poison-but in fact, this part of his content was plagiarized a lot. Dunce's article, and it turned out that the tomato's name "lycopersicum" was miscopied as "lycoperticum".

  However, there was no public channel to refute rumors in Europe at that time, and the examples mentioned by John Gerard also happened in real life, which made tomatoes excluded from recipes for a long time, and they can be seen everywhere in the wild.

  For example, not long ago, Xu Yun randomly searched outside, and found a lot of wild ripe tomatoes, no one wanted to eat them at all.

   And this misunderstanding of tomato made Xu Yun think of the super killer tomato sauce.

  Don’t look at ketchup, which is ugly, it seems to be far from soap or antibiotics.

  But in modern Europe, the status of ketchup is almost equal to that of Laoganma in China, even worse.

  French fries, burgers, afternoon tea, bread, steak. Ketchup is available for almost everything.

   Speaking of ketchup at the same time, there is another little-known story here.

  Everyone should know that the English name of ketchup is ketchup, but this name is not derived from English itself, but is transliterated from other languages.

   This language is not other languages, it is Chinese!

   The word ketchup in the Oxford Dictionary was first recorded in English in 1690 (Ketchup-Wikipedia), but the raw material is not tomato.

  The source of the word is ke-tsiap in Chinese, which originally refers to the marinade produced by marinating fish, which is used for seasoning when cooking.

  Stanford University professor Ren Shaotang once wrote a blog titled "The Language of Food", he believes that the root of tomato sauce can be traced back to a fish sauce in eastern Fujian Province:

  In the Hokkien dialect in the 18th century, this fish sauce was called 'ketchup', 'ge-tchup\' or \'kue–chiap' in different regions.

  People who understand Hokkien or Cantonese can recognize the last syllable of the American pronunciation of the word, 'chiap' or 'tchup', which means \'jiang', and the Mandarin pronunciation is 'juice'.

  He also wrote that the 1982 edition of the "Mandarin Hokkien Dialect Dictionary" confirmed that "Fan" is an ancient character, pronounced "gue" in Hokkien colloquial, meaning stored fish.

   Therefore, "ketchup" is an old saying for "fish sauce" in the southern Fujian dialect. (Two papers, DOI: 10.1515/bz-1969-0202, DOI: 10.2307/2852096, the latter one is from Cambridge)

Of course.

   With the update and iteration, the current tomato sauce is not much similar to the ketchup in the 17th century.

   Just like the ancestor of the cat is the ancient cat beast, it belongs to a connection in origin.

   Then Xu Yun looked around, and as time went by, the outdoor temperature became lower and lower:

   "Mr. Newton, try two quilts. It is a very common sauce in our east. Not only is it not poisonous, but some people eat it and become Zhongyuan Wubai Keke, and become a millionaire!"

  Hearing this, Xiao Niu couldn't help but look at the tomato sauce in front of him again, with a hesitant expression on his face:

  Although he doesn't want to admit it, this oriental man named Fat Fish has indeed brought him a lot of good things since he appeared, and he has also helped a lot.

  Thinking of this, the Maverick felt sure, and took the initiative to pick up a potato.

   I can't die anyway, so try a little bit.

  The skin of the baked potato was a little hot, and the calf quickly changed the position of the potato between his hands, while breathing continuously from his mouth.

  With the assistance of the cold air, the temperature on the surface of the potatoes quickly dropped.

   I saw that the calf pinched a slightly sunken part familiarly, and exerted light force.

  With a puff of white smoke rising, the potatoes were split in two.

   Then he took the smaller half of it in his hand, dipped it in the tomato sauce prepared by Xu Yun, and stuffed it into his mouth with potatoes.

   After a while, Maverick let out a light snort:

   "Huh? The taste is not bad, delicious!"

  British seasoning at this time was very poor, bread wrapped with butter was basically the most common configuration, other than that, bacon was used to pickle vegetables, and then together with pomegranate seeds and peeled limes, it was made into an early simple salad.

Therefore, the appearance of ketchup can be regarded as filling the gap between "sweet and sour". Its popularity has been verified countless times in later generations. Fit the ingredients too.

  Looking at the calf that had been stained with the second bite, Xu Yun smiled slightly and said:

   "Then Mr. Newton, if we sell ketchup at a low price, do you think anyone will pay for it?"

   "Selling? Paying for it?"

   Pata—

  Hearing these two key words, Xiao Niu suddenly stood still on the spot like a jumping egg whose power had been cut off.

   He didn't even notice that the potato in his hand fell to the ground.

   A few seconds passed.

  A ray of light suddenly appeared in his eyes, like two gold coins embedded in it, shining golden.

   Yesterday, the ratio of disliking and liking the book title has reached 10-1, I tm

  (end of this chapter)