The biggest tomato producer in the world today?” Smith paused, for dramatic effect. “China. You don’t think of tomato being a part of Chinese cuisine, and it wasn’t ten years ago. But it is now.”

Smith dipped one of my French fries into the homemade sauce. “It has that raw taste,” he said, with a look of intense concentration. “It’s fresh ketchup. You can taste the tomato.”

Ketchup was, to his mind, the most nearly perfect of all the tomato’s manifestations. It was inexpensive, which meant that it had a firm lock on the mass market, and it was a condiment, not an ingredient, which meant that it could be applied at the discretion of the food eater, not the food preparer.