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The recorded English-language etymology for "ketchup" suggests that the word comes from one of the Chinese dialect's word for tomato. Do you have any idea which Chinese word sounds like ketchup?
possibly Hokkien 膎汁 (kê-chiap, “fish sauce”) via Malay kecap ~ kicap “any dark clear sauce from soy, fish etc” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup#Etymology
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Are the Vietnamese and Chinese languages related? Or perhaps one of the two cultures was introduced to that fruit by the other, and thus preserved the name?
Not related at all in recent history and I have no insight on the etymology links but Vietnamese used to be written in a mix of original Vietnamese Chinese-style characters before they changed to a Latin alphabet with Colonialism and Communism so there was definitely contact.
Apparently their beets looked the same as ours: > The kind of beets used in such an ancient recipe should not be different from the beets we use today, even in name. We read in Dictionary of Assyrian Botany (by Campbell Thompson, 1948) that in the ancient Mesopotamian region it was called ‘shumundar,’ it was as red as blood, and has a spinning-top shape (pp. 49, 51).
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Actually, in Persian, tomato is literally translated as “western plum”. This is common in our language as we usually say “western” or “foreign” as a prefix to many things that were introduced to Iran (strawberries, sit-style toilets, etc)
Interesting, in various European languages those tend to be "Turkish": turkey hens (the bird called turkey now), Turkish corn (maize), Turkish beans (long beans). Again, trade routes.
What's enlightening is how astonishingly little salt is used, by our standards.
So the quantity of salt is not specified in the original recipe, therefore it could be the same as any present cook would choose.
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Sorry, when I said in nature, I meant undomesticated sheep. Domesticated sheep that get lost for a while don't magically learn how to shed their coat, yes.
Pretty much all domesticated sheep will cast their fleeces. There are some breeds that don't, and obviously due to random genetics you'll get individuals that don't. Sheep that don't cast their fleeces are damn near impossible to shear and are mostly kept for meat. Likewise, sheep that don't have much of a "rise" (see my other comment) and are difficult to shear quite often, uh, don't have a particularly long career,…
Close to a recipe on Tasting History... https://www.tastinghistory.com/recipes/babylonianlambstew Our current favorite dinner watching along with Alton Brown.
https://blog.crystalking.com/ancient-roman-food-parthian-chi... the parthian chicken was stupid easy and tasty
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Actually, in Persian, tomato is literally translated as “western plum”. This is common in our language as we usually say “western” or “foreign” as a prefix to many things that were introduced to Iran (strawberries, sit-style toilets, etc)
Chinese does the same thing, using prefixes like 西 (western), 番 (foreign), and 洋 (foreign) for introduced items. For tomatoes, interestingly, it has two common names that follow this pattern: 西紅柿, literally translated as "Western Red Persimmon", and 番茄, literally translated as "Foreign Eggplant". Other produce examples include 番薯 (Foreign Yam) for sweet potato, 西瓜 (Western Melon) for watermelon, 洋蔥 (Foreign Onion) fo…
For instance, watermelons come from Sudan/Egypt and thus arrived in China from the West long before Europeans visited.
Another example is The Journey to the West (Monkey King) novel which is also about travelling to India.
Gonna be quite challenging to get "1/2 cup of rendered sheep fat"
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As an aside, tomatoes are golden apples (pomodoro), and oranges are Chinese apples (Apfelsin) in some languages. A lot of cultures appear to name botanicals using apples or, in GP’s context, stone fruit as “reference” points.
Everything is an apple, it seems. You also have earth apples (pomme de terre in French, aardappel in Dutch) for potatoes, grenade apples (pomegranate in English, granatäpple in Swedish, ...), pineapple, ...