The tomato, Solanum lycopersicum or, no longer acceptably, Lycopersicon esculentum, is an American plant which bears the familiar fruits (perceived as a vegetable because of their main culinary uses), and which is now grown and consumed worldwide. The plant is a member of the family Solanaceae and therefore a relation of the New World capsicum peppers and potato, and of the Old World aubergine. The presence of nightshades in the family may have made people cautious about using newly discovered members of it. This did not apply to capsicum peppers, since they were seen as providing a valuable new spice and spread like wildfire. The aubergine and the potato, however, were received with considerable reserve in W. Europe; and the same was true of the tomato.
Sophie Coe (1994) and others (e.g. Rick, 1976) explain that the tomato originated in north-western S. America, where the ancestor of our edible tomato was most likely L. cerasiforme. S. pimpinellifolium, or currant tomato, which bears a long spray of tiny red fruits which split on the plant is another candidate, but L. cerasiforme has greater genetic similarity to the cultivated variety than any other. The edible descendant travelled north to Mexico and was one of the Solanaceae cultivated by the Aztec. There is no evidence that the wild varieties were ever eaten in their lands of origin, and all tomatoes consumed in S. America were reintroduced after the Spanish Conquest. A linguistic confusion occurred as the tomato was domesticated by the Aztec. The Aztec word tomatl meant simply plump fruit. For them, our edible tomato was xitomatl, while the husk tomato (tomatillo) was miltomatl. Spaniards, not understanding the importance of the suffix in each name, used tomatl, which they turned into tomate, for both. As a result, it is often difficult, when reading early Spanish sources about Aztec use of the tomato, to know which fruit is meant. What does seem clear, however, is that there was a consistent linkage in Aztec cuisine between the tomato and chilli peppers.
This link snapped when the fruits were taken to Europe. The story of their reception when they reached Spain and Italy is a tangled one, unravelled by Grewe (1988). He postulates arrival at Seville, a centre for international trade, especially with Italy and the Low Countries, early in the 16th century. An Italian herbalist (Mattioli, 1544) referred to what must have been tomatoes as mala aurea (golden apples) and later (1554) mentioned a red variety. The Dutch herbalist Dodoens (1554) gave a fuller description and an illustration. Thereafter mentions and illustrations became fairly frequent, and some dietitians presume people eat them often enough, though quick themselves to condemn the practice. A supposed connection with the mandrake, the suggestive form of whose root had earned it a reputation as an aphrodisiac, led to the notion that the tomato had similar properties, which may in turn have prompted the Swiss naturalist Gesner to call it poma amoris. The fruit thus became linked with the Hesperides myth and acquired the string of names exemplified by pomme d'amour in French and pomodoro in Italian.
As Grewe (1988) pointed out, no printed recipes for using tomatoes appeared in the early period of Spanish culinary literature (1599 to 1611), and after that efflorescence no new cookbooks were published in Spanish until 1745 (when the book by Juan Altamiras had thirteen recipes with tomato as an ingredient, out of a total of 200). However, it is reasonable to suppose that there was some activity with tomatoes in Spanish kitchens. The earliest known printed recipe, which occurs in a Neapolitan book, Lo scalco alla moderna, by Antonio Latini (1692/4) is for ‘Tomato Sauce, Spanish Style’ and calls for adding finely chopped parsley, onion, and garlic—with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar—to the finely chopped flesh of previously seared and peeled tomatoes.
Grewe also draws attention to evidence from paintings that already, half a century before Latini's book, the tomato was becoming a familiar ingredient. The painting by Murillo which is popularly known as The Angels' Kitchen (1646), executed for the Franciscan convent of Seville, shows angels preparing a meal, with a tomato, two aubergines, and a sort of pumpkin visible in a corner.
Take-up of the new fruit was much slower in France. Santich (2002) has discovered what may be the earliest recipe, for a tomato conserve, among private papers in the Vaucluse, dating from 1795. Grewe had already noted that the seed merchants Andrieux-Vilmorin only transferred the tomato from the fruit section to that for vegetables in 1776. It did not get more repeated mentions in cookery books until the second quarter of the 19th century. Santich also posits that the manuscript she found may have links to Caribbean origins and to the oldest American recipe for tomato, also for a conserve or paste, preserved in the receipt collection of Harriott Pinckney Horry of 1770.
Andrew Smith (1994) was able to marshal interesting evidence of use in English kitchens from about 1750 on, including a recipe in the 1758 supplement to Hannah Glasse (1747). He makes the point that Jewish families in England, many of whom were of Portuguese or Spanish descent, seemed to display more readiness than others to eat the strange fruit. Smith also remarks that an early edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1797) announced that the tomato was now ‘in daily use’. However, for most people in Britain the tomato remained an object of suspicion until the end of the 19th century, witness this passage from Flora Thompson (1945):
It was on Jerry's cart tomatoes first appeared in the hamlet. They had not long been introduced into this country and were slowly making their way into favour. The fruit was flatter in shape then than now and deeply grooved and indented from the stem, giving it an almost starlike appearance. There were bright yellow ones, too, as well as the scarlet; but, after a few years, the yellow ones disappeared from the market and the red ones became rounder and smoother, as we see them now.
At first sight, the basket of red and yellow fruit attracted Laura's colour-loving eye. ‘What are those?’ she asked old Jerry.
‘Love-apples, me dear. Love-apples, they be; though some hignorant folks be a callin’ 'em tommytoes. But you don't want any o' they—nasty sour things, they be, as only gentry can eat. You have a nice sweet orange wi' your penny.' But Laura felt she must taste the love-apples and insisted upon having one.
Such daring created quite a sensation among the onlookers. ‘Don't 'ee go tryin' to eat it, now,’ one woman urged. ‘It'll only make ’ee sick. I know because I had one of the nasty horrid things at our Minnie's.'
Meanwhile, in Italy the large-scale cultivation and canning of tomatoes, especially in the region of Naples, had developed into a large industry, and Americans were also canning tomatoes on a large scale from the mid-century onwards. And in the 1830s the production of tomato ketchup, which was to become America's ‘national condiment’, besides invading tables in most other parts of the world, began in earnest.
Although tomato ketchup is by far the most important tomato product, tomato paste or concentrate is also a staple. It is now an industrial product but like so many other things it has its traditional domestically produced counterpart, known in most of the countries bordering the Mediterranean. Patience Gray (1986) gives a fine description of making it in the south of Italy, where it is ‘la salsa secca, probably the most healthy conserve in existence’. The same author also describes the making of la salsa (the regular, thick liquid kind), which could by a stretch of the imagination be regarded as an ancestor of tomato ketchup.
Among the most basic and simple tomato dishes of the Mediterranean region is one of which Patience Gray writes: ‘Probably the most universal refreshment in summer among working men in Greece, Italy and Catalonia is a slab of bread onto which are crushed some ripe tomatoes with a garlic clove, sea salt, bathed in olive oil, most invigorating.’ This is the Catalan Pa amb tomàquet, which is the sole subject of the book of that name by Pomés (1985), an outstanding example of the witty-but-serious approach to food topics of which good examples occur in California, the Philippines, and a few other favoured areas besides Catalonia. And see also on this foodstuff, in its Majorcan version, Graves (2000).
The total number of dishes around the world in which tomato is the or a main ingredient must amount to thousands. For a foodstuff which has come up to the front from almost nowhere in under two centuries, the tomato has proved to have astonishingly vigorous penetrative qualities, so that it is as close to being ubiquitous in the kitchens of the world as any plant food. In part this is due to its versatility; the hundreds of varieties now popular (green, yellow, orange, red, tiny to huge, spherical to irregular, juicy or not, acid or sweet or balanced, strongly flavourful or not, suitable for stuffing, etc.) are capable between them of playing a multitude of roles in finished dishes. It is also relevant that the tomato is highly marriageable. Among its best-known mates are basil, garlic, onion, thyme, oregano, peppers (with a bow to the Aztec), cheese, egg, and meaty flavours.
Lest it be thought that the tomato has carried all before it, victorious on every possible front, it should be noted that there are certain dishes where continuing skirmishes are fought between those who would admit tomato and those who would exclude it; one such is clam chowder. In these instances it may be that the adversaries of the tomato unknowingly display some vestigial traces of the suspicion which greeted its first arrival in the Old World.
See also canned foods; ketchup; ratatouille; pizza.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Coe, Sophie (1994), America's First Cuisines, Austin: University of Texas Press.
Grewe, Rudolf (1988), ‘The Arrival of the Tomato in Spain and Italy’, Proceedings of the First International Food Congress in Turkey (1986).
Harvey, Mark, with Quilley, Steve, and Benyon, Huw (2002), Exploring the Tomato, London: Edward Elgar.
Smith, Andrew F. (1994), The Tomato in America, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
