by Sam Warf

Tuh-Mah-to; Pronunciation doesn’t matter when it comes to this fabulous, nutritious fruit known as a vegetable.  It’s hard to believe that such widely-used food sources were once considered a deadly poison. Available year-round in fresh and preserved forms, there is no shortage of uses for this versatile vegetable.

Several botanists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did not know what to call the round fruit.  They only knew it as an orange, round and luscious fruit they called a peach.  French botanist Tourmefort, provided the Latin botanical name as Lycopersicon esculenturm and we call it now a tomato.

The English word tomato comes from the Spanish word, tomato, derived Nahuati word, tomato.  It first appeared in print in 1595.  A member of the deadly nightshade family, tomatoes were erroneously thought to be poisonous by Europeans who were suspicious of their bright shiny fruit.  Native versions were small like cherry tomatoes and most likely yellow rather than red.

The tomato is native to western South American and Central American. In 1519 Cortez discovered tomatoes growing in Montezuma’s gardens and brought back seeds to Europe where they planted as ornamental curiosities but not eaten.

Most likely, the first variety to reach Europe was yellow in color, since in Spain and Italy they were known as pomi-d’oro, meaning yellow apples.

The French referred to the tomato as pmmmes-s’amour or a love apple as they thought them to have stimulating aphrodisiacal properties.

The high acidic content of the tomatoes is helpful and Italians embraced the tomato and made it a prime candidate for canning, which is one of the main reasons the tomato was canned more than any other fruit or vegetable by the end of the nineteenth century. Sun-dried tomatoes, while intense and concentrated and slightly salty, go a long way.  When cooking with sun-dried you need to open and soak them in water for 4 – 5 hours to plump up the tomatoes. Just remember they are stronger in flavor so you do not use as many in a recipes.

It took the Italians to embrace the tomato into the juicy history that we know.  They called it the golden apple and have done so since the sixteenth century.

Spaniards actually led the way teaching Italians to fry tomatoes with aubergubes, squash and onions, and use the dish for a condiment. Mediterranean diets often contain tomatoes raw and cooked and were steamed with oil, seasonings and other vegetables, and eaten as a main dish in a meal along with bread and some other cereal product.  The late eighteenth century gave the first recorded evidence of tomato sauces and preserved pastes.

As a cook from the South, I know I love the tomato and now you know how important the tomatoes are in our kitchens.

Happy Cooking

Sam