Salsa golf is a mayo-ketchup mashup
Despite its name suggesting otherwise, salsa golf is actually a sauce, not a sport. At its core, it consists of a blend of mayonnaise, ketchup, and lemon juice, but it can also incorporate ingredients like roasted red peppers, brandy, Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, minced garlic, and spices such as paprika, oregano, and cumin. This sauce can be seen as a variation of ketchup, which has its own peculiar history, originally starting as a Chinese fermented fish sauce before evolving into the tomato-based condiment we now enjoy with our french fries.
Similar to ketchup, salsa golf has experienced its own transformations, evolving from a simple homemade recipe to commercially produced versions by well-known brands like Hellmann's. Salsa golf isn't the only condiment that combines ketchup (or other tomato products) with mayonnaise; there are also Russian dressing, Utah's fry sauce, a British condiment known as Marie Rose, and Belgium's sauce andalouse, among others. However, none quite match the unique heritage of salsa golf.
Nobel prize winner Luis Leloir brought a chemist's mind to condiments
Salsa golf emerged from a culinary desire for something different than the usual condiment: mayonnaise. According to popular accounts, one summer day in the mid-1920s, Luis Leloir, a young medical student, was at the Golf Club in the Argentine coastal town of Mar del Plata with friends. While enjoying a plate of shrimp, he found the accompanying plain mayonnaise unsatisfactory. He reportedly requested additional ingredients from the waiter and created a new sauce that his friends named salsa golf, in tribute to the club where it was invented.
Born in Paris, France, in 1906, Leloir moved back to Argentina with his parents when he was just two years old. After obtaining his medical degree, he shifted his focus to biochemistry. Years later, when he faced financial challenges in his research, he humorously remarked that salsa golf could have funded his scientific endeavors. "If only I had patented that sauce, we’d be much better off now," he joked (as noted in "Crucible of Science: The Story of the Cori Laboratory"). In 1970, the Nobel Committee honored Leloir with its prestigious award "for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates," according to the Nobel Prize website. It’s fair to say that no other creator of a condiment has achieved such recognition.
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