Into Unscientific

"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?"

"That's right."

"But aren't tomatoes poisonous?"

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

"Mr. Newton, everyone says that tomatoes are poisonous, and people have died from eating tomatoes in history.

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

"People? Classes?"

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, 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 "Herbal Flora" by John Gerard, who is also the chief culprit in modern Europe's defeat of the tomato.

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 British people 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 cases of poisoning from eating tomatoes, which have become a strong basis for John Gerrard's argument.

'Snapped--'

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

"Class."

After a few seconds, his eyes suddenly lit up:

"Yeah, it's a little 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 kind of 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 sensed 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 eyes on Xu Yun:

"Are you saying that the acid in the tomato dissolved the lead in the solder, which caused the human body to be poisoned and die?!"

Xu Yun shrugged his shoulders and said nothing, everything was kept silent.

The tomato plant was one of the specialties brought back from the Americas by the Spaniards in the early 16th century.

It entered the UK 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. An article by Doddens, who also miscopied the tomato's name "lycopersicum" as "lycoperticum".

However, there was no public channel to refute rumors in Europe at that time, and the examples mentioned by John Gerrard also happened in reality, 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 kind of misunderstanding of tomato made Xu Yun think of the super killer of tomato sauce.

Regardless of the ugly appearance of ketchup, 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.

At the same time, when it comes to ketchup, 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 none other than 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 origin of the word is ke-tsiap in Chinese, which originally refers to the marinade produced by marinating fish and used for seasoning when cooking.

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

In the Hokkien dialect in the 18th century, this fish paste 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 archaic character, pronounced "gue" in colloquial Hokkien, meaning stored fish.

Therefore, "tomato sauce" 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 newer iterations, the current tomato sauce has little resemblance to the ketchup of the 17th century.

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

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

"Mr. Newton, please try a few bites. It is a very common sauce in our east. Not only is it not poisonous, but some people eat it and become Wubai of the Central Plains cough cough, and become a millionaire!"

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

Although I don'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, Xiao Niu felt certain and took the initiative to pick up a potato.

Anyway, I can't die, 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, and at the same time he kept breathing.

With the help 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 ketchup prepared by Xu Yun, and stuffed it into his mouth along with the potatoes.

After a while, Maverick let out a light snort:

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

At this time, the British seasoning was very poor, and bread wrapped with butter was basically the most common configuration. In addition, 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 already had the second bite, Xu Yun smiled slightly and said:

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

"Selling? Pay?"

Pat——

Hearing these two key words, Xiao Niu suddenly stood still in place 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 light.

Yesterday the ratio of not liking the book title to liking the title has reached 10-1, I tm