Sauce vs. Ketchup

Main Difference

The main difference between Sauce and Ketchup is that the Sauce is a liquid, creaming or semi-solid food served on or used in preparing other foods and Ketchup is a sauce

• Sauce

  In cooking a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi-solid food served on or used in preparing other foods. Sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to a dish. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin salsa, meaning salted. Possibly the oldest recorded European sauce is garum, the fish sauce used by the Ancient Greeks; while doubanjiang, the Chinese soy bean paste is mentioned in Rites of Zhou in the 3rd century BC.

  Sauces need a liquid component, but some sauces (for example, pico de gallo salsa or chutney) may contain more solid components than liquid. Sauces are an essential element in cuisines all over the world.

  Sauces may be used for sweet or savory dishes. They may be prepared and served cold, like mayonnaise, prepared cold but served lukewarm like pesto, cooked and served warm like bechamel or cooked and served cold like apple sauce. They may be freshly prepared by the cook, especially in restaurants, but today many sauces are sold premade and packaged like Worcestershire sauce, HP Sauce, soy sauce or ketchup. Sauces for salad are called salad dressing. Sauces made by deglazing a pan are called pan sauces.

  A chef who specializes in making sauces is called a saucier.

• Ketchup

  Ketchup is a sauce used as a condiment. Originally, recipes used egg whites, mushrooms, oysters, mussels, or walnuts, among other ingredients, but now the unmodified term usually refers to tomato ketchup. Various other terms for the sauce include catsup, catchup (archaic), ketsup, red sauce, tomato sauce, or, specifically, mushroom ketchup or tomato ketchup.

  Ketchup is a sweet and tangy sauce now typically made from tomatoes, sugar, and vinegar, with assorted seasonings and spices. The specific spices and flavors vary, but commonly include onions, allspice, coriander, cloves, cumin, garlic, and mustard; and sometimes include celery, cinnamon or ginger.The market leader in the United States (60% market share) and United Kingdom (82%) is Heinz. Hunt’s has the second biggest share of the US market with less than 20%. In much of the UK, Australia and New Zealand ketchup is also known as “tomato sauce” (a term that means a fresher pasta sauce elsewhere in the world) or “red sauce” (especially in Wales).

  Tomato ketchup is most often used as a condiment to dishes that are usually served hot and may be fried or greasy: french fries, hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken tenders, tater tots, hot sandwiches, meat pies, cooked eggs, and grilled or fried meat. Ketchup is sometimes used as the basis for, or as one ingredient in, other sauces and dressings, and the flavor may be replicated as an additive flavoring for snacks such as potato chips.

• Ketchup (noun)

  a spicy sauce made chiefly from tomatoes and vinegar, used as a relish.