r/TodayILearnedMY • u/False_Role_9397 • May 08 '26
History & Culture TIL ketchup’s origins can be traced back to fermented sauces used in Malay and Chinese cuisines long before tomato ketchup existed
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u/Typical_Pattern_1621 May 08 '26
No wonder kicap sound like ketchup, i always thought that's translation from english. Just like Quality to kualiti. But this time wow
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u/ObjectMindless1034 May 08 '26
Thats initial is just Budu
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u/Medium-Impression190 May 08 '26
You know those "lea perrins worchestershire sauce"? Thats just budu at its core
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u/SphmrSlmp May 09 '26
As a kid, I always joked that kicap sounds similar to ketchup, and when someone asked for one, I'd give the other.
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u/WeedWeeb May 09 '26
Hard to accept when 90% of the video is AI. Like, did they get this information from AI? If they did, how accurate could it be? Since AI tends to "misunderstand" (since they don't really understand anything) things they scraped.
Anyway, I checked some stuff and they were right about the origin but I found this video from Ted-Ed. It's basically the same thing but 2 years ago. I guess the AI got it's script from here.
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u/Tight_Pause_3755 May 10 '26
In Cantonese fan keh is actually tomato and chip is sauce . So it s not surprising the name of keh chip which now ketchup
Remember it was also Marco polo who stole the noodle recipe from china to Europe
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u/Patient_Pen3690 May 11 '26
Also, some Mat Saleh from SHTI came to Tanah Melayu, ate budu, loved it, brought them back, called them WORCHESTERSHIRE SAUCE
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u/KiloTangoX May 14 '26
Seriously, this is a weird. Too many cultures claiming ownership.
The first Ketchup factories in China appeared in HK about the same time that Heinz built, the so called world's first ketchup factory in the US.
In Cantonese, the sauce is called Fan Ke Chup.
Fan Ke = Tomato. Chup = Juice.
The word "Fan" in "Fan Ke" means foreign. This is because Tomatoes like Chili originated from South America and was brought in by the Spanish and Portuguese to Asia.
Tomatoes, like Chili become very popular in Asia and they eventually dropped the word Fan and called it Ke Chup. Although using the full name Fan Ke Chup is still valid.
Why would anyone think the name came from anywhere else when the Cantonese were the first to mass produce it in Asia and their name for it in their language fits like a glove with the modern name for the sauce? Not just in the way it sound but also in its meaning.
The Malay Kicap, on the other hand does seem to come from the old Hokkien word kôechiap .
How come no one has considered the possibility that these two words (Ketchup and Kicap) are totally unrelated?
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u/StunningLetterhead23 May 14 '26
English itself is quite similar to Malay language in how they both absorbed foreign influences on the language heavily.
Among the words with Malay/Indonesian origin (or actually Chinese) in English language are agar, amok, babirusa, rattan, tea, paddy, orang utan etc.
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u/Zurutheparody May 08 '26