Cocktail Sauce: Who invented it?

[Dilly]

Am trying to figure out who invented cocktail sauce... or who's credited with first serving it. Any leads much appreciated!

[foodiex2]

According to this the Native Americans invented it and then we appropriated it. Who know if this is true or not.....

Link: http://www.ghosttraveller.com/really_...

[Candy]

The native Ameerican's had catsup?

[Sherri]

The OXFORD Companion to Food begs to differ. Horseradish is native to SE Europe and W Asia, not to the Americas. It was brought to this country but did not originate here. The cute story about Native Americans using cocktail sauce must have been devised by someone who'd had one too many cocktails him/herself.
NB: even tomato use was spotty by Native Americans who had access to them.

[Karla]

Weatherford, Jack McIver."Indian Givers" New York:Ballantine; 1988.

The importance of the American Indian peppers and tomatoes appeared much more poignantly to me in another part of Africa. (McIver 101).

The cavernous dining room that fed less than two dozen people during my stay there offered international specailties such as lasagna, steak and potatoes,tomato bisque, and local seafood curry topped with cashews...As a part of "international cuisne," each of the dishes was easily racognizable as the national or regional dish typical of one place in the world. The lasagne came from Italy, the curry from India, the torte from the German-speaking parts of Europe. The iceream was in the style known as "French Vanilla," and the fruits were the generic tropical fruits that I have eaten everywhere from the Caribbean to Bali. What struck me at that moment, however, was that even though none of those national cuisines was based on an American Indain staple, all of them had been built around American Indian foods. (McIver 102)

[Karla]

I read a paperback book years ago, probably 20 or so, I borrowed from a small-town library, called The History of Food. It had invaluable research, but I was too young to realize that, and just thought it an interesting read. It had ancient fish sauce recipes from the Roman empire.

Root, Waverly, Ed. Time-Life Books. "Foods Of The World The Cooking of Italy" New York: Time-Life Books: 1968.

The "mother cuisine" of Italy also assimilated many products of the New World and helped introduce them to the Old. It is hard to imagine modern Italian Cooking wwithout the tomato, yet no European had ever set eyes on it before Cortes conquered Mexico.The first Italian description of a tomato, in 1554, called it pomo d'oro or "golden apple" (spelled pomodero today). And in fact the first tomato seen in Europe was yellow in color and the size of a cherry. It took nearly two centuries for the Italians to develop new, bigger, red varieties regularly used in cooking; it was used at first as a salad vegatable. (Wavery 25).

[bobby p]

H J HEINZ...

[Karla]

The website below suggests that horse radish is of Mediterranean/E.European origin, with many different countries, and radically different cultures using it, before those nations which discovered the Americas and the tomato, botanically speaking that is..

How tomatoes and horse radishes married and married well, is indeed a mystery...Great Question!!!!!

Tomato-from the Americas

Horse Radish-from E. Euro/Med.

German-Two Terms Meaning: More Radish, Greater Radish.

Japanese Terms: Seiyo Wasabi-Western Wasabi, and, Wasabi Daikon-radish wasabi.

French Terms: Strong radish

http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/g...

[FLEUR]

I don't believe that cocktail sauce, basically ketchup and horseradish , is known in any cuisine other
than American.
My guess is that it was first created in a seafood house, and then commercialized by Heinz. Or vice-versa.