How Fries And Ketchup Became An Iconic Pairing

There are some foods we automatically think of in pairs. Peanut butter and jelly. Cheese and crackers. Bacon and eggs. And then there are french fries and ketchup, an iconic pairing that's uniquely American. One 2020 Buzzfeed poll found that a whopping 83% of readers put ketchup on their fries. But did you ever wonder how this duo met in the first place and what led them to become the powerhouse couple they are today? While there's no specific written history of pairing ketchup with fries, it appears to date back to the 1940s, with the rise of fast food.

First, it should be said that french fries are not actually French; they're Belgian. And though they came along sometime in the late 1600s, Americans have been emphatically enjoying them as a side dish since the 1930s. And in Belgium, they're usually eaten with mayonnaise. Of course, there are numerous dipping sauces for fries, from Utah fry sauce to comeback sauce, ranch, and aioli, and it's likely that at first, Americans either weren't dipping fries at all or were using an assortment of unknown sauces for several decades before ketchup came on the scene, thanks in large part to McDonald's.

While "potatoes served in the French manner" were served to Thomas Jefferson at the White House in 1802, tomato ketchup as we know it didn't appear until 10 years later. But before ketchup made it to the Americas, it was invented by, believe it or not, the Chinese way back in the 1700s, though it's probably even older than that. The ingredients of China's original ketchup first included pickled fish brine — not exactly an obvious fry dip, to say the least. It was called "ge-thcup" or "koe-cheup" according to History.com. From there, it spread to Indonesia and the Philippines, and English colonists in Southeast Asia caught wind of it. When those Englishmen brought it back to the United Kingdom, they began using the term "ketchup" in reference to any sauce that was savory and brined or fermented, including sauces containing fermented mushrooms, walnuts, and oysters.

In 1812, the first recipe for tomato ketchup appeared thanks to a Philadelphia scientist and tomato enthusiast. In the bizarre history of ketchup, a whole slew of people started making it, putting all manner of preservatives in it so that it might be shelf-stable enough to bottle and sell. Many of those additives were harmful, so the Food & Drug Administration eventually stepped in, establishing rules for what could and could not be contained in commercially sold ketchup.

In 1906, the Heinz company made a name for itself by developing preservative-free ketchup out of pickled tomatoes soaked in vinegar and pureed. Ketchup could now be mass-produced, and it began to gain popularity, thanks in part to the Heinz company's strong marketing techniques. That brings us to where the french-fry-and-ketchup pairing really started.

America's fast-food restaurants started to pop up in the mid-20th century, and frozen french fries came on the scene shortly thereafter, making them a natural side dish for these eateries to sell: They were portable and easy to eat with one's hands, on the go. Soon after, in 1968, the first to-go ketchup squeeze packet was sold, enhancing the portability of the pair. Although there's no definitive history about the first use of ketchup with fries, the likely reason that ketchup became synonymous with fries was the formalized partnership between Heinz and McDonald's in the 1970s, ensuring that Heinz ketchup became the go-to condiment for fries ... and the rest is history.