You Say Tomato, I Say Xitomatl

The tomato is one of the world’s most popular foods. Where would Italy be without its lucious tomato sauces for pasta and pizza? What kind of gazpacho would Spain have created without the tomato? What would brunch be without a Bloody Mary? What would the salad bar be without its cherry tomatoes or a BLT without the T? Pretty darn boring, that’s what.

Tomatoes are an ancient food—they were probably growing wild in South America, somewhere in the Andes Mountains of Peru, thousands of years ago. The early tomato was much smaller than the red globe we buy at the store today and was probably eaten in much the same way as raspberries or blackberries, in season and on the spot. Local Native Americans probably didn’t cultivate the tomato, although they gathered enough to eat with chilis. According to food historian Meredith Sayles Hughes, the tomato does not appear either in the pottery or the artwork of these ancient people.

Tomatoes may have been cultivated first in Mexico. How the seeds arrived there no one knows. Regardless of how they got there, tomatoes were quickly adopted by the Aztecs, who called the tomato xitomatl, which means "plump thing with a navel." The Spanish explorers, who arrived in the early 1500s, called it tomate and took the new food back home. The tomato quickly traveled to Italy through the kingdom of Naples. Italians liked to eat it raw with oil and salt. An Italian herbalist, Pierandrea Mattioli, wrote the first account of the tomato, which was somewhat negative. Despite the bad press, the tomato was grown as a food plant by Italians. Other Europeans grew it as an ornamental plant, fearing the tomato was poisonous. (It is a member of the nightshade family, which may be where the fear originated.)

The Moors introduced the tomato to the Middle East in the 1500s; the tomato then traveled to Asia with Dutch traders. The British acquainted India with the tomatoes at about the same time. Some early tomato supporters claimed the tomato was an aphrodisiac. It was probably about this time that the tomato was dubbed "love apple," which is a sloppy translation of the French term pomme des Mours, or "apple of the Moors." Confused? So were the Italians, who may have thought the tomato and the eggplant were the same (they are botanical cousins).

The tomato made its way back to America with European colonists in the early 1700s, and there are reports that the Japanese were growing it by the early 1800s. But the tomato really took off as a home garden favorite during World War I. They are easy to grow, are ready for harvesting in approximately 90 days and taste wonderful. U.S. consumers purchase over $4 billion worth of tomatoes every year.

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