Origin: 700AD: The exact origin of tomatoes remains a mystery, but there is reason to believe that the credit for this amazing fruit dates as far back as 700AD with the Peruvian Incas when it is argued that its colour was yellow and its shape, pear like. It is further argued that, under the name Tomatl, it was traded to the Aztecs in Mexico, and from there, via the Spanish Conquistadors, to Europe.
16th Century (Elizabethan Period): During this time tomatoes were known as:
The Apple of Love to the French
The Apple of Paradise to the Germans
The Apple of Gold to the Italians
There are conflicting reports from Elizabethan England about the tomato. In some, it is reported that the tomato was considered poisonous because it comes from the nightshade family (as do potatoes and egg plant (aubergine)). Other hearsay reports from England during the 16th century, say that the tomato was considered a powerful aphrodisiac. Yet other reports say that it was first grown in England as an ornamental climber. The first reported British tomato grower was a Patrick Bellow in 1554!
19th Century: The Great USA Debate: Fruit or Vegetable?
Until the late 1800s tomatoes were classified as a fruit in the USA. The transition from fruit? to vegetable in the USA, came about purely for commercial reasons in 1893. Prior to that, tomatoes along with all other fruits, were exempt from taxes in the USA!. When this came to the attention of the Supreme Court, a Judge possibly with increased government revenues in mind, mandated that the tomato was indeed not a fruit at all because it was eaten at mealtimes. He thus classified it as a vegetable..
Elsewhere in the world, the tomato was, and is, classified as a fruit.
20th Century - A Growing Passion for Tomatoes: Tomatoes started to become household musts from summer picnics through to the main ingredients in exotic dishes. Consider Italy's amazing dishes of tomato-sauced pastas, cacciatore, pizza, minestrone, osso buco, and on and on. The French too have featured the tomato since the days of the Great Careme, King of Chefs. The Spanish honour the tomato in their famous gazpacho soup and even have a tomato throwing festival every year (not to be missed!). The Greeks skewer them with chunks of lamb. In India and Indonesia hot-tomato chutneys are a staple. In the United States the red wonder has even taken men to fame and fortune, among them Joseph Campbell, who created the world's biggest soup company by first canning large beefsteak tomatoes!!.
21st Century - Medicinal Finds: In addition to the growing passion for tomatoes for their colour, taste and excitement in cooking, along with the many exciting new flavoursome varieties continually coming onto the market, the humble tomato has not only become one of the top selling fresh produce items in the western world today, but is now formally recognised as having great medicinal benefits through lycopenes- an ingredient firmly believed to be cancer fighting for prostate cancer???..
And more recently it is being discovered that yet another active ingredient (still to be formally identified) in the humble tomato is responsible for reducing levels of blood clotting in that anyone with cardiovascular heart disease would benefit from taking 250 mls of tomato juice (fresh or processed) every day?..
What next for the humble tomato then?.
