Tomato Lady I
by Patricia Simko
2001©
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A Little History of the Tomato
French botanist Tournefort provided the Latin botanical name, Lycopersicon esculentum, to the tomato. It translates to "wolfpeach" -- peach because it was round and luscious and wolf because it was erroneously considered poisonous. The botanist mistakenly took the tomato for the wolfpeach referred to by Galen in his third century writings, ie., poison in a palatable package which was used to destroy wolves. The English word tomato comes from the Spanish tomatl, first appearing in print in 1595. A member of the deadly nightshade family, tomatoes were erroneously thought to be poisonous (although the leaves are 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 America and Central America. In 1519, Cortez discovered
tomatoes growing in Montezuma's gardens and brought seeds back to Europe
where they were 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 pommes d'amour, or love apples, as
they thought them to have stimulating aphrodisiacal properties. Italy
was the first to embrace and cultivate the tomato outside South America.
In 1897, soup mogul Joseph Campbell came out with condensed tomato soup,
a move that set the company on the road to wealth and further endearing
the tomato to the general public. Campbell may have made tomato soup popular,
but the first recipe is credited to Maria Parloa in 1884 whose book First
Principles of Household Management and Cookery describes her tomato chowder.
The high acidic content of the tomato makes 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.
If you happen to be the unfortunate victim of the wrong end of a skunk,
tomato juice will neutralize butyl mercaptan, the prime ingredient in
the stinky defensive spray. The tomato world record for size is held by
Charles Roberts of Great Britain, who in 1974 harvested a whopper weighing
four pounds, four ounces -- about the size of a small boy's head. In the
United States today, tomatoes are second in consumption only to potatoes.
There are thousands of varieties of tomatoes in an array of shapes, colors
and sizes. The most common shapes are round (Beefsteak and globe), pear-shaped
(Roma) and the tiny cherry-sized (Cherry and Grape). Yellow varieties
tend to be less acidic and thus less flavorful than their red counterparts.