Jason English
What are the 57 Varieties of Heinz?
by Jason English - April 20, 2007 - 9:43 AM

heinz57.gifTo determine the 57 Varieties of Heinz, I opened my fridge.

1. Ketchup.
2. Dill Pickles.

I could not find a third. Not a great start.

But this is a question, I learned, that many others have asked before me. There are (about) 181,000 Google results for a “what are the 57 varieties of heinz” search.

Here’s what the Heinz.com FAQs used to say, according to Yahoo! Answers:

Our corporate history tells us that in 1896, Henry John Heinz noticed an advertisement for “21 styles of shoes.” He decided that his own products were not styles, but varieties. Although there were many more than 57 foods in production at the time, because the numbers “5″ and “7″ held a special significance for him and his wife, he adopted the slogan “57 Varieties.”

So in contrast to the learnings from my focus group of one refrigerator, there are far more than 57 varieties. Thousands, perhaps. I’m not sure whether or not this includes green ketchup, which has been discontinued.
greenketchup.jpg

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Comments (10)

  1. I have never thought about it. Thanks you opened my eyes! :) Well, I’m going bananas Heinz invented this magical numbers :)

    posted by Antilos on 4-20-2007 at 3:32 pm

  2. Yuck! My sister used to use the colored stuff. I don’t like ketchup much to begin with, so purple and blue were just too much for me.

    posted by Pointy-Hatted Geek on 4-20-2007 at 5:40 pm

  3. True, Heinz probably doesn’t make 57 varieties, but they do make more than pickles and ketcheup. I mean, there is the obvious “Heinz 57″ sauce. Also, if you check out the imported British foods section of your supermarket, you’ll will find a lot more products with the Heinz label. I could almost swear they make canned Spotted Dick. (I know it sounds like a social disease, but its really dessert!)

    posted by Allison on 4-20-2007 at 10:09 pm

  4. They have Dill Pickles? Gosh.

    I’m sure I have seen about 2 dozen Heinz Ketchup varieties. Salsa Ketchup, Chili Ketchup, Chili Sauce which is really Ketchup, etc.

    And little else except some beans in tomato sauce. I mean Ketchup.

    Good to know that there are still new tomatoid adventures out there waiting to be discovered. Makes life almost bareable.

    posted by Storm on 4-21-2007 at 9:48 am

  5. The history of “ketchup/catsup” in general is interesting. Although we only call “tomato ketchup” “ketchup” today, at one time in history, as I understand, it was used to describe any “condiment sauce”, including some interesting varieties…

    How about a retrospective on ketchup?

    posted by Ryan on 4-23-2007 at 8:29 am

  6. What I’ve read somewhere is that 57 is the number of the recipe. He tried one recipe after another and on the 57th one, decided he’d hit the jackpot. So he called it Heinz 57. The other 56 varieties were never used.

    posted by Kathy on 4-23-2007 at 9:58 am

  7. I always thought that 57 referred to the number of tomato varieties used in their catsup. As to the other catsups alluded to by Ryan, I loooove banana catsup. I got hooked on it in Okinawa.

    posted by Jamie on 4-23-2007 at 10:50 am

  8. Will & Mangesh, you need to watch Unwrapped on the food channel. It’s right up your alley, being full of answers to questions most normal people don’t think about till they hear them. (How does the smile get on only some of the Goldfish crackers?)They had a great segment on the 57 varieties question. What? You think I’m gonna tell you? I hate ketchup AND catsup and still love t.v. so much I watched it! That’s what you get for suggesting we turn off our sets – it’s also how I know for sure now you 2 don’t have regular jobs like the rest of us. You wouldn’t be taking brisk morning walks, except to the coffee pot or water cooler and you’d need a good dose of zoning out before the tube at the end of your day.

    posted by Choobie on 4-25-2007 at 7:12 am

  9. Ah, puts me in mind of the brief time I worked at the Heinz factory in Bowling Green, Ohio, while an undergraduate at BGSU. Among the 57 varieties made there were Nine Lives Cat Food. Quality control included “if the case doesn’t seem to weigh 50 pounds, take out each can and see which one is light.” The machinery was 50 years old at the time and had a habit of sending bottles spinning off the line to shatter at one’s feet. It was only at the end of the day when I showered that I could tell what part was blood and what part ketchup. Since my ratty little apartment was directly across the street, I came out of the shower smelling like–ketchup. That was a tomato season to remember!

    posted by Lynn Heath on 4-25-2007 at 11:31 am

  10. Additionally, the beginning history of ketchup is crazy- ketchup (and catsup) existed waaaaaaayyyy before the European love affair with tomatoes. The original ketchup ancestor was a sauce known as garum, which was made with pickled fish. And it was the super-condiment of the time, across China, Central Asia and the Mediterranean and inspiring a slew of similar ketchups. These new sauces contained all sorts of ingredients, including mushrooms (mushroom ketchup is still around, by the way!), onions, and walnuts.

    posted by Ben on 8-27-2007 at 10:17 am

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