What do you think of this fact?
Today, ketchup goes on fries and burgers. But in 1830s America, the tomato suddenly got a reputation as a remedy. And ketchup made the list as one of the recipes. The story behind it is a mix of marketing, half-baked science and an all-out pill war.
A doctor with big promises
In 1834, physician and amateur botanist John Cook Bennett went public with a bold claim: tomatoes had medicinal powers. According to Atlas Obscura, he said they prevented cholera and treated diarrhea, headaches and indigestion. He didn’t back any of it up with research of his own.
Bennett didn’t just recommend tomatoes, either. According to JSTOR Daily, he also handed out recipes: tomato sauce, fried tomatoes, tomato pickles and tomato catsup. Want to stay healthy? Dig in. Fun detail: JSTOR Daily also describes Bennett as the operator of a traveling medical diploma mill.
The great pill war
Business people smelled money. Starting in 1837, Cleveland merchant Archibald Miles sold “Dr. Miles’ Compound Extract of Tomato.” Physician Guy R. Phelps followed with his own “Compound Tomato Pills.” Both advertised hard, and Miles had a network of agents from the Gulf Coast to the Canadian border.
The pills promised to cure just about anything, from indigestion to syphilis. The catch: when some of the pills were analyzed, they didn’t contain a trace of tomato. In late 1839, the pill war ended abruptly when both men stopped advertising nationally.
The slogan of the era, according to JSTOR Daily: “Tomato pills will cure all your ills.”
What was left
The pills disappeared, but the tomato stuck around. All the hype had made it famous in the US. According to Atlas Obscura, food historian Andrew F. Smith notes that within 10 years, tomatoes went from relatively little consumption to “the queen of the vegetable market.”
It was never a miracle cure. But without all that medical nonsense, the ketchup bottle might not be sitting on quite so many tables today.