How the Explosive Ketchup Wars Put Heinz on Top

All this week, the City Cast team is treating you to some of our favorite food and drink episodes from 2022. We're starting off with — what else? — Heinz ketchup.

Can you imagine sitting down with a crispy plate of fries, reaching for your trusty bottle of ketchup, and watching it explode? It was a real problem in the late 19th century! But our very own H.J. Heinz figured it out — or rather, he had one very special fan who did it for him. We're revisiting our conversation with Gastro Obscura's Sam Lin-Sommer about how it all went down.

Check out Sam's story, "When Every Ketchup But One Went Extinct," which draws a ton from a book by Andrew F. Smith called "Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment."

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