I felt relieved the first time I spotted Heinz on the list of Royal Warrant holders. Finally— an American company. Still...ketchup? We finally get some credit, and it’s for ketchup? Must we Americans always fit so neatly into this hamburger and fry-eating stereotype everyone has of us? H.J. Heinz Company holds a warrant from Queen Elizabeth as “Purveyors of Heinz Products.”
As I researched Heinz, I realized I had several misconceptions about the company. For starters—even though it’s based in Pittsburgh—it’s not exactly accurate to think of Heinz as an American company. Instead it’s a global food-making powerhouse with several centers of production. Heinz has had a strong presence on the British food scene for nearly as long as it’s been around in the United States. In fact, the company sells a whole host of Heinz-branded food products there that would be unrecognizable to most Americans. Here Heinz-branded products are limited to ketchup, 57 Sauce and vinegar. In the UK, the product line includes not only ketchup but also baked beans (with the unfortunate name Heinz Beanz), Salad Cream (think Miracle Whip), pasta sauces, spaghetti, tomato soup, Weight Watchers entrees, and—get this—baby food. How can a brand so familiar to Americans at once become so unfamiliar? It’s kind of like finding out your husband has another wife and 12 children in, say, Tallahassee that you never knew about.
Heinz Tomato Ketchup was first sold in the US in 1876, and only 10 years later it was available in the UK at specialty foods store Fortnum and Mason. In the 1920s, Heinz moved its production facilities for British products from the US to Great Britain. The brand was so firmly entrenched in British food production by World War II that it was targeted twice by the Nazis. This pivotal role was acknowledged by a Royal Warrant in 1951.
Great Britain’s monarch was also targeted by Nazis during the Blitz. After Buckingham Palace was bombed in 1940, there were strong fears that the royal family wasn’t safe there. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth famously chose to stay in London despite the obvious danger, but they sequestered their young daughters Elizabeth and Margaret at Windsor Castle. Princesses and castles might be the stuff of fairy tales, but that wasn’t so true of this castle, which was especially bleak and un-homey during the war since its furnishings were covered, its art and antiques sent offsite for safe-keeping. The princesses joined hundreds of other British children who were evacuated out of cities to strange and unfamiliar farms and homes in the country to wait out the war away from their families. Elizabeth and Margaret spent a total of five years holed up at Windsor Castle, and this constituted almost the entirety of Elizabeth’s teenage years.
Wow. For years I’ve been complaining about my own teenaged years—holed up in a tiny town in central Illinois (eating, in hindsight, way too much ketchup)—waiting for the day I could bust out of the nest and head to college. Reading about Queen Elizabeth’s repressed teenaged years makes me feel sort of ungrateful and terrible. My life was pretty cush by comparison.
We opened our bottle of British Heinz ketchup at our house on a night we made crunchy tacos using an Old El Paso taco kit. I wasn’t sure if Nathan would like the tacos, so I tried introducing them with his favorite condiment. I put a generous squirt on his taco and treated myself to a long red ribbon of it on each of my own while Adam gagged across the table. (He’s not a ketchup fan). The sweet and salty taste of Heinz ketchup mingling with the cumin and onion in the meat, the corn shell, and the tomato and cheddar cheese on top took me back instantly to my parents’ house, circa 1990. It was Taco Night; our dog Sally was positioned strategically next to my chair to beg for scraps; and my parents, my older sister, and I were about to head to the living room to watch The Cosby Show on TV.
I might have been eating British ketchup, but the memory was distinctly American. If there is any difference in taste between the ketchup manufactured in Great Britain and the ketchup manufactured for the American market, I couldn’t detect it. While my guess is that Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Warrant is aimed solely at the British division of Heinz, I still think we Americans are allowed the tiniest bit of pride in this choice. It sort of is our ketchup Queen Elizabeth is eating. And that’s pretty cool...even if it does remind the world about our eating habits.
Where to buy: Where can’t you buy Heinz ketchup? If you’re interested in Salad Cream, Heinz Beanz, or some of the other British products, check out Amazon.
Finally, many thanks to the McVitie’s company for sending us samples of HobNobs and dark chocolate digestive biscuits when we had trouble locating them here. While I still haven’t found a store that sells them, I’ve been assured they’re available at some Jewel and Meijer locations in and around Chicago. Let’s hope so—we polished these off in about two days.
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