來認(rèn)識一下保衛(wèi)美國番茄醬的人

來認(rèn)識一下保衛(wèi)美國番茄醬的人

My search for the secrets of American ketchup began in a sun-baked field near Los Banos, Calif.

我對美國番茄醬的秘密的探索始于加利福尼亞州洛斯巴諾斯附近一片陽光炙烤的田野。

The field didn't look like much at first. Just a wide, pale-green carpet of vines. Then Ross Siragusa, the head of global agriculture for the company Kraft Heinz, bent over, lifted up some of the vines, and revealed a mass of small, red fruit, too many to count.

一開始，這塊地看起來并不怎么樣。只是一大片淡綠色的藤蔓。接著，卡夫亨氏全球農(nóng)業(yè)主管羅斯西拉格薩彎下腰，舉起一些藤蔓，露出一大堆紅色的小果子，多得數(shù)不清。

Each acre of this field, Siragusa tells me, will produce about 60 tons of tomatoes. That's up from about 40 tons per acre just 15 years ago. The tomatoes themselves are a mix of tomato varieties that are specially bred to produce red, thick ketchup.

西拉格薩告訴我，這片土地每英畝將生產(chǎn)大約60噸西紅柿。這比15年前的每英畝40噸有所增加。西紅柿本身就是各種西紅柿的混合體，這些西紅柿是專門為生產(chǎn)紅色、粘稠的番茄醬而培育的。

A mechanical harvester approaches at the pace of a brisk walk. It's a giant machine, a factory on wheels. It collects a swath of tomato plants, shakes fruit loose from the vines, and sends a stream of bright red tomatoes into a big truck driving alongside. The scale and speed of the operation boggles the mind.

一臺機(jī)械收割機(jī)以輕快的步伐走近。這是一臺巨大的機(jī)器，一個有輪子的工廠。它收集了一長串西紅柿植株，把藤蔓上的水果搖下來，然后把一串鮮紅色的西紅柿扔進(jìn)旁邊的一輛大卡車?yán)?。這次操作的規(guī)模和速度令人難以置信。

Within a day, a processing plant in Los Banos will turn these tomatoes into paste. Weeks or even months later, the paste will become the central ingredient in ketchup.

在一天之內(nèi)，洛斯巴諾斯的一家加工廠將把這些西紅柿變成醬。幾周甚至幾個月后，這種糊狀物將成為番茄醬的主要成分。

Nothing in this scene, from the tomato varieties to the mechanical harvester, existed when the Heinz company created the classic version of American ketchup many decades ago. And I wonder, has ketchup's taste changed, too?

幾十年前，當(dāng)亨氏公司推出經(jīng)典版的美國番茄醬時，從番茄品種到機(jī)械收獲機(jī)，這一切都不存在。我在想，番茄醬的味道也變了嗎?

Siragusa says that he doesn't know. But he knows somebody who would. A man named Hector Osorno. They call him the ketchup master, which is actually a formal title at Kraft Heinz. "He's completely obsessed [with ketchup]," Siragusa tells me. "He's got secrets that he won't divulge."

西拉格薩說他不知道。但他知道有人會這么做。一個叫赫克托·奧索爾諾的人。他們稱他為番茄醬大師，這實(shí)際上是卡夫亨氏的一個正式頭銜。“他完全癡迷于番茄醬，”西拉格薩告訴我。“他有些秘密是不會泄露的。”

A few hours later, I meet Osorno. He's smiling the way people do when they're hiding delightful secrets.

幾個小時后，我遇見了奧索爾諾。他的微笑就像人們在隱藏令人愉快的秘密時那樣。

"What makes you a ketchup master?" I ask him. "Is it your skill? Your knowledge?"

“是什么讓你成為番茄醬大師?”我問他。“這是你的本事嗎?”你的知識嗎?”

"I like to think that it is my skill. But it's probably my stubbornness more than anything else," he says. "I'm obsessive to do the right thing the first time."

“我傾向于認(rèn)為這是我的技能。但最重要的可能是我的固執(zhí)，”他說。“我著迷于第一次就做正確的事情。”

Osorno grew up in Mexico, became an engineer, and started working at the Heinz company, now Kraft Heinz, more than 20 years ago. It's been all ketchup, all the time, ever since. He's in charge of making sure that each batch of Heinz ketchup comes out of the factory exactly as advertised.

奧索爾諾在墨西哥長大，成為一名工程師，并在20多年前開始在亨氏公司(現(xiàn)在的卡夫亨氏)工作。從那以后，一直都是（負(fù)責(zé)）番茄醬。他負(fù)責(zé)確保每一批亨氏番茄醬出廠時和廣告上的一模一樣。

I ask him my question about ketchup's taste. It's remained constant, Osorno assures me, although the Heinz recipe is slightly different in different countries. This created a minor crisis a few years ago, when the company had to come up with one version for all of Europe. Germans liked ketchup with more vinegar; the British version had always been spicier.

我問他關(guān)于番茄醬味道的問題。奧索諾向我保證，盡管亨氏的配方在不同的國家略有不同，但它萬變不離其宗。幾年前，這引發(fā)了一場小危機(jī)，當(dāng)時該公司不得不為整個歐洲推出一個版本。德國人喜歡加醋的番茄醬;英國版一直更辣。

There was a time, Osorno tells me, when old-timers at Heinz thought that the taste of their American product was shifting a little. "They detected that something was changing, and adjusted accordingly," he says.

奧索爾諾告訴我，曾經(jīng)有一段時間，亨氏的老前輩們認(rèn)為他們美國產(chǎn)品的口味發(fā)生了一點(diǎn)變化。他說:“他們發(fā)現(xiàn)口味正在發(fā)生變化，并做出了相應(yīng)的調(diào)整。”

He won't tell me exactly what they adjusted, of course. "For that I'd need a letter from the president of the company, co-signed by the legal counsel," he says, shaking with laughter.

當(dāng)然，他不會告訴我他們調(diào)整了什么。“為此，我需要該公司總裁的一封信，由法律顧問共同簽署，”他說，笑得渾身發(fā)抖。

For some people, ketchup is a symbol of the problems with American food. It's highly processed, mass-produced, and full of sugar. Historian Gabriella Petrick certainly saw it that way when she started digging into the archives of the H. J. Heinz Company.

對一些人來說，番茄醬是美國食物問題的象征。它經(jīng)過高度加工，大量生產(chǎn)，富含糖分。當(dāng)歷史學(xué)家加布里埃拉·佩特里克開始研究亨氏公司的檔案時，她肯定是這么看的。