The wild ancestor of the tomato, Solanum pimpinellifolium, is native to western South America. These
wild versions were the size of peas. The first evidence of domestication points to the Aztecs and
other
peoples in Mesoamerica, who used the fruit fresh and in their cooking. The Spanish first introduced
tomatoes to Europe, where they became used in Spanish food. In France, Italy and northern Europe,
the
tomato was initially grown as an ornamental plant. It was regarded with suspicion as a food because
botanists recognized it as a nightshade, a relative of the poisonous belladonna. This was
exacerbated by
the interaction of the tomato's acidic juice with pewter plates. The leaves and fruit contain
tomatine,
which in large quantities would be toxic. However, the ripe fruit contains a much lower amount of
tomatine than the immature fruit.
Mesoamerica
The exact date of domestication is unknown; by 500 BC, it was already being cultivated in
southern
Mexico and probably other areas. The Pueblo people are thought to have believed that those who
witnessed the ingestion of tomato seeds were blessed with powers of divination. The large, lumpy
variety of tomato, a mutation from a smoother, smaller fruit, originated in Mesoamerica, and may
be
the direct ancestor of some modern cultivated tomatoes.
Spanish distribution
Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés may have been the first to transfer a small yellow tomato to
Europe after he captured the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, in 1521. The earliest
discussion of the tomato in European literature appeared in a herbal written in 1544 by Pietro
Andrea Mattioli, an Italian physician and botanist, who suggested that a new type of eggplant
had
been brought to Italy that was blood red or golden color when mature and could be divided into
segments and eaten like an eggplant—that is, cooked and seasoned with salt, black pepper, and
oil.
It was not until ten years later that tomatoes were named in print by Mattioli as pomi d'oro, or
"golden apples".
After the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Spanish distributed the tomato throughout
their
colonies in the Caribbean. They also took it to the Philippines, from where it spread to
southeast
Asia and then the entire Asian continent. The Spanish also brought the tomato to Europe. It grew
easily in Mediterranean climates, and cultivation began in the 1540s. It was probably eaten
shortly
after it was introduced, and was certainly being used as food by the early 17th century in
Spain.
China
The tomato was introduced to China, likely via the Philippines or Macau, in the 1500s. It was
given
the name 番茄 fānqié (foreign eggplant), as the Chinese named many foodstuffs introduced from
abroad,
but referring specifically to early introductions
Italy
The recorded history of tomatoes in Italy dates back to at least 31 October 1548, when the house
steward of Cosimo de' Medici, the grand duke of Tuscany, wrote to the Medici private secretary
informing him that the basket of tomatoes sent from the grand duke's Florentine estate at Torre
del
Gallo "had arrived safely". Tomatoes were grown mainly as ornamentals early on after their
arrival
in Italy. For example, the Florentine aristocrat Giovanvettorio Soderini wrote how they "were to
be
sought only for their beauty", and were grown only in gardens or flower beds. The tomato's
ability
to mutate and create new and different varieties helped contribute to its success and spread
throughout Italy. However, in areas where the climate supported growing tomatoes, their habit of
growing to the ground suggested low status. They were not adopted as a staple of the peasant
population because they were not as filling as other fruits already available. Additionally,
both
toxic and inedible varieties discouraged many people from attempting to consume or prepare any
other
varieties. In certain areas of Italy, such as Florence, the fruit was used solely as a tabletop
decoration, until it was incorporated into the local cuisine in the late 17th or early 18th
century.
The earliest discovered cookbook with tomato recipes was published in Naples in 1692, though the
author had apparently obtained these recipes from Spanish sources
Britain
Tomatoes were not grown in England until the 1590s. One of the earliest cultivators was John
Gerard,
a barber-surgeon. Gerard's Herbal, published in 1597, and largely plagiarized from continental
sources, is also one of the earliest discussions of the tomato in England. Gerard knew the
tomato
was eaten in Spain and Italy. Nonetheless, he believed it was poisonous (in fact, the plant and
raw
fruit do have low levels of tomatine, but are not generally dangerous; see below). Gerard's
views
were influential, and the tomato was considered unfit for eating (though not necessarily
poisonous)
for many years in Britain and its North American colonies.
However, by the mid-18th century, tomatoes were widely eaten in Britain, and before the end of
that
century, the Encyclopædia Britannica stated the tomato was "in daily use" in soups, broths, and
as a
garnish. They were not part of the average person's diet, and though by 1820 they were described
as
"to be seen in great abundance in all our vegetable markets" and to be "used by all our best
cooks",
reference was made to their cultivation in gardens still "for the singularity of their
appearance",
while their use in cooking was associated with exotic Italian or Jewish cuisine
Middle East and North Africa
The tomato was introduced to cultivation in the Middle East by John Barker, British consul in
Aleppo
c. 1799 to 1825. Nineteenth century descriptions of its consumption are uniformly as an
ingredient
in a cooked dish. In 1881, it is described as only eaten in the region "within the last forty
years". Today, the tomato is a critical and ubiquitous part of Middle Eastern cuisine, served
fresh
in salads (e.g., Arab salad, Israeli salad, Shirazi salad and Turkish salad), grilled with
kebabs
and other dishes, made into sauces, and so on.
United States
The earliest reference to tomatoes being grown in British North America is from 1710, when
herbalist
William Salmon reported seeing them in what is today South Carolina. They may have been
introduced
from the Caribbean. By the mid-18th century, they were cultivated on some Carolina plantations,
and
probably in other parts of the Southeast as well. Thomas Jefferson, who ate tomatoes in Paris,
sent
some seeds back to America. Some early American advocates of the culinary use of the tomato
included
Michele Felice Cornè and Robert Gibbon Johnson.[24] Many Americans considered tomatoes to be
poisonous at this time; and in general, they were grown more as ornamental plants than as food.
In
1897, W. H. Garrison addressed the Medico-Legal Society of New York stating, "The belief was
once
transmitted that the tomato was sinisterly dangerous." He recalled in his youth tomatoes were
dubbed
"love-apples or wolf-apples" and they were shunned as "globes of the devil."[25]
Alexander W. Livingston receives much credit for developing numerous varieties of tomato for both
home and commercial gardeners.
Early tomato breeders included Henry Tilden in Iowa and a Dr. Hand in Baltimore. The U.S.
Department
of Agriculture's 1937 yearbook declared that "half of the major varieties were a result of the
abilities of the Livingstons to evaluate and perpetuate superior material in the tomato."
Livingston's first breed of tomato, the Paragon, was introduced in 1870, the beginning of a
great
tomato culture enterprise in the county. In 1875, he introduced the Acme, which was said to be
involved in the parentage of most of the tomatoes introduced by him and his competitors for the
next
twenty-five years.
When Livingston began his attempts to develop the tomato as a commercial crop, his aim had been
to
grow tomatoes smooth in contour, uniform in size, and sweet in flavor. He eventually developed
over
seventeen different varieties of the tomato plant. Today, the crop is grown in every state in
the
Union.
Modern commercial varieties
The poor taste and lack of sugar in modern garden and commercial tomato varieties resulted from
breeding tomatoes to ripen uniformly red. This change occurred after discovery of a mutant "u"
phenotype in the mid-20th century, so named because the fruits ripened uniformly. This was
widely
cross-bred to produce red fruit without the typical green ring around the stem on uncross-bred
varieties. Prior to general introduction of this trait, most tomatoes produced more sugar during
ripening, and were sweeter and more flavorful.
Etymology
The word tomato comes from the Spanish tomate, which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word tomatl
[ˈtomat͡ɬ], meaning 'swelling fruit'; also 'fat water' or 'fat thing'. The native Mexican
tomatillo
is tomate. When Aztecs started to cultivate the fruit to be larger, sweeter and red, they called
the
new variety xitomatl (or jitomates) (pronounced [ʃiːˈtomatɬ]), ('plump with navel' or 'fat water
with navel'). The specific name lycopersicum (from the 1753 book Species Plantarum) is of Greek
origin (λύκοπερσικων, lykopersikon), meaning 'wolf peach'.
