Re Ketjap pizza [Was: Re[2]: MDDM Ch. 23 Summary, Notes]

[jbor]

on 14/12/01 12:31 AM, Michael Baum at michael.baum at nist.gov wrote:

> 
> 
> I must have missed the debate? I thought "ketjap" was just a generic
> term for table sauce, which _could_ be tomato-based, but certainly
> ketjap manis is more a soy sauce kind of sauce.
> 
> But that isn't actually my point, what I wanted to say was that I
> think jbor is on to something. With a little tidying up this recipe
> sounds like a pretty good hors d'oeuvre. I think we ought to kitchen
> test it.

You're on. I'll try it tonight, though it's going to be an expensive pizza!

http://www.mackenzieltd.com/cheeses.asp

And, I'll admit, I'm usually one who would pick anchovies off of a pizza.

I'm guessing, from the earlier context, that the sauce Dixon would have
brought along was probably a very sweet, hot and spicy version of the local
*ketjap*. The reference to it being a "very Chinese Concoction" (79.24) fits
in with the soy sauce idea, and I'd suggest that Pynchon has done his
homework on this detail as on most everything else in the text.

I think Els's whispered suggestion - "Strike her on the bottom ... and
perhaps she will behave" (79) - serves a number of purposes in the text. The
lewd *double entendre* is the girl's, and is part and parcel of the sexual
manipulation the Vroom women are working on Mason to bring him to breaking
point in order that he impregnate Austra. (The girls are sluttish in their
own right too I think, and Els is one step ahead of Dixon here.) Secondly,
it indicates that the girls have embraced local/native culture, in defiance
of their father, in that Els has used this style of *ketjap* bottle before,
and knows how to get the thick sauce out. And, finally, it does reflect the
modern day routine with the ubiquitous sauce bottle at the family dinner
table, but to my mind this is done to indicate the actual (and surprising)
historical derivation of Americans call "ketchup" and we call tomato sauce,
and its variants like HP sauce and barbeque sauce and sweet chilli sauce and
so on. (My personal preference is Worcestershire: no bottom-striking
required.)

best