What Would We Do Without Tomatoes?

The tomato has origins traced back to the early Aztecs around 700 A.D; therefore we tend to believe that the tomato is native to the Americas. It was not until around the 16th century that Europeans were introduced to this fruit when the early explorers set sail to discover new lands (and plunder them!)

Throughout Southern Europe, the tomato was quickly accepted into the kitchen, yet as it moved north, more resistance was apparent. The British, for example, admired the tomato for its beauty, but believe that it was poisonous, as its appearance was similar to that of the wolf peach.

However, a further search into my files tells me another story: “…most Europeans thought that the tomato was poisonous because of the way plates and flatware were made in the 1500′s”. I remember wading through an Elizabethan cookbook and noted this oddity. It turns out that rich people in that time used flatware made of pewter, which has a high-lead content. Foods high in acid, like tomatoes, would cause the lead to leech out into the food, resulting in lead poisoning and death. Poor people, who ate off of plates made of wood, did not have that problem, and hence did not have an aversion to tomatoes. This is essentially the reason why tomatoes were only eaten by poor people until the 1800′s, especially Italians. There you have it, tomato history as you’ve never heard before.

At the time, no one seemed to know where the tomato came from. Until a renowned Russian scientist, Vavilov, who brilliantly conceived the idea that if one wants to locate the very center of origin for any crop species, look for the area which still has the highest diversity of that crop. This is grounded on the idea that only a portion of the wild plant gene pool will be incorporated into a domesticated plant line, such that the cultivated crop will represent only a portion of the genetic variety found in the wild ancestors which presumably are still inhabiting the area, in more or less the same form, to this day. By that logic, one would look closely at the western coast of South America, in present day Peru, where eight species in the tomato genus still grow wild in the Andes Mountains. And, as we say, the rest is history.

Tags: , Food, Fruit/Vegetable, History, Tomato