You say tom-ay-toh, I say tom-ah-toh. Some used to say
aphrodisiac, while others said poison. Now we say it’s a food essential to pizza,
ketchup, BLTs and more. Toddlers live off the stuff, but once upon a time people
were afraid to eat it. This is the bizarre story of the tomato, the fruit (yes,
it’s a fruit from a botanical standpoint, though legally a vegetable)
that sailed across the ocean and onto the table in every burger
joint across America.
In South America, where the tomato was native, the Aztecs coined the term "tomatl," which is the
origin of what we call it today. Myth says that the Aztecs served tomatoes at
their human sacrifices, but that fact is still up for debate. Human flesh with
sauce sounds downright awful, anyway.
When the Spanish colonized the Americas in the 16th
century, they changed the word to tomate and brought the berry (yes, it is a berry!) back to Europe with them. The Spanish immediately incorporated tomatoes into
their cuisine. Meanwhile, Northern Europeans, especially the French, were very
paranoid because they knew the tomato was part of the deadly nightshade family, which
can be poisonous. In fact, the leaves and roots are toxic in large doses, but the
fruit is generally safe (though it does contain a small amount of alkaloid
tomatine).
Italians
called this new food “pomodoro,” which translates to “golden apple,” which some think
is because the first tomatoes in Italy were yellow. Italian herbalist Pietro Mattioli said they were mandrakes, an ancient food thought to be aphrodisiacs. In
the Bible, mandrakes were used to make love potions; they were lumped in with
eggplants, also nightshades and assumed poisonous, yet tempting, like a
forbidden fruit. The French called them love apples (pomme d’amour), which
could also be a mis-translation of eggplants -- those were called pomme d’Moors,
as they were prized in Arabic cuisine.
In 17th century Naples, a cookbook was written using Spanish recipes, and tomatoes became accepted into Italian
cuisine. In Britain, they weren't widely consumed until the 18th century.
The tomato finally came back to the colonies in the early
1700s, possibly via the Caribbean. Thomas Jefferson, who lived in France for
many years, raised them on his farm in Monticello. People were still afraid they were poisonous in the late 1700s, so legend has
it that Jefferson walked down the street munching on one, making them a trendy curiosity. He even served them at the President’s
House in 1806. Word of how delicious they were slowly spread over the next century.
In 1897, Campbell Soup Company put tomatoes in a canned, condensed soup, and a
rainy day staple was born. Thousands of varieties of the tomato plant now exist, and heirloom varieties are
especially prized. Tomatoes are not only popular in America, but are a primary ingredient in the cuisines of Italy, Spain, North Africa, the Middle East and even Southeast Asia.
So the next time you dip your fries in ketchup, think of it
as a noble act. How very far the tomato had to come to get to your
burger; It is a true legend!
TL;DR: Tomatoes are an everyday food for us, but for a time people either thought they were poisonous or a love potion ingredient. Luckily, we
figured out the truth and pizza has never been the same.