Beside the campfire, Maverick looked at the potatoes and ketchup in front of him hesitantly, and asked Xu Yun:
"Is it a sauce made from tomatoes?"
"That's right."
"But aren't tomatoes poisonous?"
Hearing Mavericks' words, Xu Yun couldn't help but laugh:
"Mr. Newton, everyone says tomatoes are poisonous, and people did die from eating tomatoes in history.
But think about it carefully, who are the people who have had accidents because of eating tomatoes, or what class of people are they?"
"Human? Class?"
Hearing Xu Yun's words, Mavericks was stunned for a moment, then thought of something, and ran back to the house without saying anything:
"Wait a minute, 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 Porter, an agricultural tycoon in Leeds...Milton Bridges, a Spanish royal nobleman...Hisali Wyatt, Italy
A noble daughter-in-law..."
What the calf is holding is "Herbal Flora" written by John Gerrard, who was also the main culprit of relegating tomatoes to the sidelines in modern Europe.
He clearly mentioned in the book that "tomatoes are poisonous and inedible", so no one in Britain dared to eat tomatoes throughout the 17th century.
It was not until the mid-18th century that the British gradually dared to use tomatoes in daily dishes, and they had to be steamed for a long time to eliminate toxins.
This book records numerous examples of poisoning caused by eating tomatoes, and these examples became a strong basis for John Gerard'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:
"Yes, it's a bit strange. These people seem to be businessmen or powerful people who are not short of money? Why are there no civilians?"
Xu Yun raised a smile at the corner of his mouth and continued to guide:
"Mr. Newton, what kind of tableware do they use?"
"tableware?"
Maverick's eyes drifted slightly to the sky, looking at the moonlight and recalling:
"It's usually soldering. I've seen him a few times at school banquets. In the early years, when Uncle William was relatively wealthy, he also attended some upper-class parties."
"Then think about it again, is there anything in the solder that might react with tomatoes?"
Mavericks had already vaguely noticed something at this time, and even before Xu Yun gave any prompts, he began to think in the direction of dissolution and reaction:
"Solder is generally a mixture, basically silver, tin and lead...wait, lead?!"
He grabbed the book tightly with one hand, raised his head suddenly, and stared at Xu Yun:
"Are you saying that the acid in the tomatoes dissolved the lead in the solder, causing human poisoning and death?!"
Xu Yun shrugged and said nothing, keeping everything in silence.
The tomato plant was one of the specialties brought back from America by the Spanish in the early 16th century.
It entered Britain at the end of the 16th century, but for a long time, people only regarded tomatoes as ornamental plants and did not dare to eat them.
The first reason is that tomatoes belong to the Solanaceae family, and most Solanaceae plants contain toxic alkaloids. For example, Belladonna, Datura and other Solanaceae plants are poisonous.
So at that time, people believed that tomatoes were also poisonous and they should try to stay away from them.
But in fact, tomato toxins mainly exist in the rhizomes and immature fruits. The alkaloid content of mature tomatoes is very low, and it will not cause much harm to health at all.
The second reason is the quack mentioned above, John Gerard. The "Herbal Flora" he wrote in 1597 directly characterized tomatoes as poisons - but in fact this part of his content was plagiarized.
In an article by Dodens, the name of tomato "lycopersicum" was mistakenly copied as "lycoperticum".
However, there were no public channels to refute rumors in Europe at that time, and the examples mentioned by John Gerard actually happened. This resulted in tomatoes being excluded from the diet for a long time, and they could be seen everywhere in the wild.
For example, not long ago, Xu Yun randomly searched outside and found a lot of wild ripe tomatoes that no one wanted to eat.
This misunderstanding of tomatoes made Xu Yun think of ketchup, a super killer.
Despite its humble appearance, ketchup seems to be very different from soaps and antibiotics.
But in modern Europe, the status of ketchup is almost the same as that of Lao Gan Ma in China, or even worse.
French fries, burgers, afternoon tea, bread, steak... almost everything can be served with ketchup.
At the same time, talking about ketchup, there is a little-known story here.
Everyone should know that the English name of ketchup is ketchup, but this name does not originate from English itself, but is transliterated from other languages.
This language is not another language, it is Chinese!
The earliest recorded use of the word ketchup in English in the Oxford Dictionary is in 1690 (Ketchup - Wikipedia), but the raw material is not tomatoes.
The origin of the word is the Chinese ke-tsiap, which originally refers to the marinade produced by marinating fish and is used for seasoning during cooking.
Ren Shaotang, a professor at Stanford University, once wrote a blog called "The Language of Food". He believes that the roots of ketchup can be traced back to a fish sauce in eastern Fujian Province:
In the 18th century southern Fujian dialect, this fish sauce 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 'sauce', 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 southern Hokkien spoken language, which means stored fish.
Therefore, "tomato sauce" is an ancient word for "fish sauce" in southern Fujian dialect. (Two papers, DOI: 10.1515/bz-1969-0202, DOI: 10.2307/2852096, the latter one is from Cambridge)
Of course.
With updates and iterations, the current tomato salsa has little in common with the ketchup of the 17th century.
Just like the ancestors of cats are ancient cat beasts, it is a kind of origin connection.
Then Xu Yun looked around. As time went by, the outdoor temperature became lower and lower:
"Mr. Newton, please try two bites of quilt. It is a very common sauce in the East. Not only is it not toxic, but some people have become Central Plains Five Whites after eating it...ahem, they have become a millionaire!"
After hearing this, Maverick couldn't help but look at the ketchup in front of him again, with a somewhat hesitant expression:
Although he doesn’t want to admit it, this oriental man named Fatty Fish has indeed brought him a lot of good things and helped him a lot since he appeared...
Thinking of this, Maverick felt sure and took the initiative to pick up a potato.
Anyway, I can't die, so I'll give it a try.
The skin of the roasted potatoes was a little hot, and Maverick quickly moved the potatoes between his hands while breathing heavily on his mouth.
With the help of the cold air, the temperature on the potato surface quickly dropped.
I saw the calf skillfully pinching a slightly sunken part and exerting slight pressure.
As a puff of white smoke rose, the potato was split into two.
Then he took the smaller half in his hand, dipped it in some tomato sauce prepared by Xu Yun, and stuffed it into his mouth along with the potatoes.
After a while, Mavericks said softly:
"Huh? It tastes pretty good, delicious!"
At this time, the British seasonings were very poor. Bread and butter were basically the most common configuration. In addition, bacon was used to pickle vegetables, and then combined with pomegranate seeds and peeled limes to make an early simple salad.
Therefore, the emergence of ketchup can be regarded as filling the gap between "sour and sweet". Its popularity has been verified countless times in later generations. It is no exaggeration to say that this thing and Europeans can really be regarded as an innate
The right ingredients.
Looking at the calf that had already taken the second bite, Xu Yun smiled slightly and said:
"Then Mr. Newton, if we set a low price for ketchup and sell it, do you think anyone would be willing to pay for it?"
"Sell? Pay for it?"
snap——
Upon hearing these two keywords, Mavericks suddenly stood on the spot like a vibrating egg with the power cut off.
He didn't even notice that the potato in his hand fell to the ground.
A few seconds passed.
Suddenly a light appeared in his eyes, like two gold coins embedded in it, the golden light shone.