I'm making a thread for this, as they seem to crop up quite often in our household - especially since it's never clear when Garner says something weird-seeming whether it's an Americanism, a Southernism or a Garnerism. So, catsup as an alternative spelling for ketchup. Is that a southern thing? It strikes me as very odd.
I thought Catsup was something different from Ketchup? I have no idea how they are different, but that is why I always thought that other word existed for that reason...
In America, the word ketchup was trademarked by the Heinz company, so other companies who made the same product had to call it catsup, catchup, etc. So bottles of Heinz stuff will say ketchup on the label, bottles from other companies will use one of the other words. However, everybody I know in New York has always called it ketchup, regardless of who makes it our what it says on the bottle. edit: Maljonic calls ketchup "tomato sauce" and we had an interesting discussion when he said he would eat tomato sauce cold, and I told him that I thought that was disgusting. To me, tomato sauce is the stuff you put on pasta.
don't get me started on that. grace won't eat pasta without some form of sauce, where as i often enjoy pasta or noodles with just a bit of oil or butter and a bit of salt. this lead to grace having to put ketchup on some pasta because i hadn't made any sauce. i nearly fainted. but, and this is the part that really stuns me, she'll put ketchup in macaroni and cheese as well. that one can ALMOST make a sort of perverse sense to me, but the other day she couldn't finish a M&C ready meal and offered it to me... I couldn't bring myself to eat it since it'd had a bit of ketchup mixed in. ah well.
There is, of course, nothing to stop someone putting ketchup on pasta. Well, nothing but tastebuds...
I should point out that, to me at least, tomato sauce is just another name for ketchup, and is never used to describe the sauce one puts on, or mixes with, pasta - even though it does often contain a high percentage of tomato, this is only ever called pasta sauce. British people are renowned in Italy for using far too much, about 10x the quantity required, pasta sauce with pasta dishes. I think Italians would generally use about 10% sauce to 90% pasta, where Brits would generally use the opposite amounts.
Thanks for the explanation, Marcia. I use the same terminology as Mal - to me, 'tomato sauce' is just another way of saying 'ketchup', and 'pasta sauce' goes on pasta. That reminds me of another one. When I say 'spaghetti', I mean the noodle-like pasta. Specifically the pasta, no more or less. When Garner says 'spaghetti', he means the dish spaghetti bolognese. He refers to a bolognese sauce as 'spaghetti sauce'. Is that a general Americanism or just a Garnerism?
A bolognese sauce is one with beef and tomato being the chief ingredients. If you eat spaghetti with meatballs, the sauce will be a bolognese. Hence the dish being spaghetti bolognese. But Garner refers to the dish simply as 'spaghetti'. To me, spaghetti is only one ingredient of the whole. We have had more than one conversation at crossed purposes over this.
To me, spaghetti is the noodle-like pasta. I know that some brands in US shops are called spaghetti sauce - I don't recall if they were all bolognese. I just use tomato sauce to refer to any sauce made with tomatoes(bolognese, marinara, primavera etc.), other than red clam sauce, that you might put on spaghetti.
So Garner's use is perhaps a regional thing (if not one of his many linguistic idiosyncrasies). I'll ask his mum what she means by spaghetti.
