A New England farmer offered ketchup for sale in 1830 in
bottles, priced from 33 to 50 cents. In 1837, Americans selling
ketchup in Britain were encouraged to rename it 'tomato chutney'
in order to draw attention to the differences between their product
and the mushroom ketchup popular in Britain.
Ketchup was sold nationwide in the US by 1837 thanks to the hard
work of Jonas Yerkes, who sold the product in quart and pint bottles.
He used the refuse of tomato canning (including skins, cores, green
tomatoes, and lots of sugar and vinegar) to create mass amounts
of ketchup. Lots of other small companies followed suit. The big
success came in 1872 when HJ Heinz added ketchup to his line of
pickled products and introduced it at the Philadelphia fair. The
Heinz formula has not changed since, and has become the standard
by which other ketchups are rated. The ketchup industry grew immensely
from that point forward, and by 1900 there were 100 manufacturers
of ketchup.
