Words by Matt Dursum
There’s nothing like a tomato. Almost every culture loves them. They give Italian pasta sauces, Mexican salsas, coastal ceviches, and spicy north Indian Masala gravies their rich umami. They’re also a base ingredient for most salads that make it on the dinner table. But what are they and where do they come from?
From a Forest Vine to an Ancient Staple
These tasty little fruits belong to the species Solanum lycopersicum, a small fruit-bearing vine native to the often harsh and arid coastal regions of Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. In its original home, the tomato plant produced fruit that was roughly pea-sized. Eventually, people domesticated them and began trading their seeds with neighboring societies and beyond.
How the plant got to Mesoamerica is still a mystery. Regardless if it was by humans or birds, the tomato wound up in Central America and Mexico. With this change in location, tomatoes evolved into something closer to the rich and meaty fruits we know and love today.
Mesoamerican societies used tomatoes extensively in their cuisine. The Aztecs documented their love of tomatoes in texts dating back to 700 AD. The fruit, known as tomatl in the Aztec language Nahuatl, was an important staple during the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. It was these conquistadors who brought tomato seeds back to Europe.
The Poison Apple
After the tomato came to Europe, it spread as an ornamental plant in northern Europe. In England, botanists incorrectly labeled the tomato as a poisonous nightshade in popular botanical journals. Thus, its poisonous reputation remained and tomatoes were treated solely as an exotic flower.
Another reason for the Northern European’s initial fear towards the fruit lies in where they placed them. Back in the early Victorian era, wealthy people used plates made out of pewter, a metal alloy that contains high amounts of lead. When the aristocracy placed the exotic red fruit on the plates, the tomato’s high acidity would extract and concentrate the lead around the tomato. When the people would eat them, they fell ill to lead poisoning. At the time, nobody knew about the true cause of the illnesses and tomatoes quickly took the blame.
The British carried this unreasonable fear towards tomatoes over with them to North America. It wasn’t until the 19th century, when hesitant farmers began planting them out of curiosity and demand from some “brave” buyers. Myths surrounding their toxicity remained, yet by the mid-19th century recipes and planting guides were published in newspapers and the tomato’s popularity as an edible fruit began to surge.
The Mediterranean Influence
After tomatoes made it to the Mediterranean region, people were quicker to view them as food. The Spanish and later Italians and French prepared sauces similar to early Mexican salsas for their meat dishes. It wasn’t until the Italian chef Antonio Latini published a popular recipe for tomato sauce in the 17th century where tomato sauce became widespread. Shortly after, people began adding the rich sauces to pastas and created a marriage made in heaven.
Around this time, the Italians also began salting their tomatoes and throwing them on straw mats under the blistering sun. This turned the fruits into dried tomato raisins and concentrated their tomato-y flavors and nutritious lycopene, an antioxidant compound responsible for their red color. After drying them, the Italians—mostly affectionate grandmothers, according to my Italian friends—would preserve the sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil to survive the not-so-cold Mediterranean winters.
In Tunisia and north Africa, tomatoes became the base for the staple Shakshuka. For this incredible egg dish, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, onions, and other vegetables are roasted and cooked into a rich and tomato-driven sauce. Once the sauce cooks, the cook drops in a few eggs and the hot and flavorful sauce poaches the eggs to perfection.
It’s thanks to these recipes that the tomato spread across the globe. Italian food, in particular, spread across the globe. Marinara sauces, pizzas, and fresh tomato salads began infiltrating the world’s diets. Eventually, the tomato became one of the world’s most planted non-grain crops.
A Global Food
The tomato is a symbol of the evolution of our diet. From an almost inedible berry growing on the rough shorelines of western South America to becoming one of the most widely planted crops on the planet, Solanum lycopersicum represents plant domestication like nothing else.
The tomato is also becoming a symbol for biodiversity. Like its cousins, potatoes and chilis, native varieties are becoming keys to understanding effective plant defense mechanisms against disease and climate change. Solanum lycopersicum is a hardy plant and grows in some of the most inhospitable environments on the planet. By understanding how native tomato varieties can withstand these environmental stresses, scientists hope to identify effective ways to fight against future diseases and potentially save one of the world’s most beloved crops.