Taylor Swift & Comeback Sauce - No. 251
Plus home-fried chicken tenders and a cookbook giveaway! 🎉🎉🎉
THAT PHOTO OF TAYLOR SWIFT at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, with two blobs of sauce on the plate—one ketchup and the other ‘’seemingly ranch’’—set in motion a gadzillion social media posts, a special-edition Heinz product launch, and now this newsletter.
It might be the Taylor effect on everything, really, from friendship bracelets, to the rising price of NFL tickets, even scientific data. A July concert of 70,000 Swifties in downtown Seattle shook the ground so hard—a combination of her sound system and Eras tour fans’ effusive enthusiasm—it registered seismometer signals equivalent to a magnitude 2.3 earthquake.
Full disclosure, while I have not attended a Taylor concert or seen her new movie, I wish she had been around when I was a teenager, and I’ve enjoyed her songs like All too Well, the long break-up ballad about that mysterious red scarf.
Yet what interests me isn’t her love life with KC Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce that’s been splattered all over social media (although I did watch SNL to see if they were going to make cameos). I’m interested in what’s on her plate in that recent photo.
This Instagram fan post was viewed more than 32 million times, according to NPR. The Empire State Building was bedecked in classic red and ranch. Without missing a beat, Heinz quickly produced 100 exclusive ‘’Ketchup and Seemingly Ranch’’ bottles of sauce as a marketing giveaway.
If you didn’t get one, don’t fret because this sauce made by mixing ketchup and mayo isn’t new and I share a recipe today. It’s been called ‘’Kranch,’’ and even before that, Comeback Sauce.
At early 20th Century church revivals in Kansas City and Denver, crowds of people came to be saved by the good word as well as barbecue with a special sauce designed to bring them back for more preaching and food.
Similar to the Rémoulade sauce of New Orleans and a bit like bottled 1000 Island dressing, Comeback Sauce is beloved in Mississippi where it accompanies fried dill pickles and shrimp, or just crackers.