Tomato - The Golden Apple From The Other Side Of The World

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

The tomato! We can hardly imagine food without it. Even if not to everyone's taste, he is one of the undisputed favorites of cuisine around the world and the protagonist of countless salads, soups, meat and meatless dishes…

And even though it grows in every garden and is on the shelves in every store, do we know its history? Contrary to expectations, he was not always here, nor was he always so loved.

The tomato was born on the other side of the globe, in distant South America. Specifically, in an area stretching from southern Colombia to northern Chile and from the Pacific coast to the foothills of the Andes, an area that reaches 3400 meters above sea level.

In the beginning, the Incas were the ones who started growing tomatoes. Then it existed under different species, but all were wild, green, bitter and not edible. Only one of them, later called by its scientific name Lycopersicum esculentum cerasiforme, left the region and began to spread to tropical and subtropical areas of America.

Discovered in Mexico in the 16th century by the conquistadors, the tomato was quickly brought to Europe before potatoes, corn and tobacco even set foot there. But still no one can say how the tomato got to Mexico. However, the word tomato is known to come from tomati, a name by which it was known in the Aztec language.

In Europe, although the first to arrive, the tomato did not immediately conquer either the gardens or the cuisine of the Europeans. The reason is that it has long been considered a poisonous plant, just like its cousins - the terrifying mandrake, the killer belladonna and the insane datura. We had to wait until the end of the first decade of 1700, when the tomato gained the status of an ornamental plant, and then a vegetable.

The culinary adventure of tomatoes in Europe it starts, of course, from Italy. Then it was discovered by all Mediterranean countries, it arrived in Bulgaria and began to be grown only at the end of the 18th century.

When he set foot in Europe, in addition to his taste, he began to be respected for others who gave him - for example, as an aphrodisiac. The Italians began to call it the Golden Apple, and the Provencals the love apple. It entered European cuisine first in the form of sauces, to gradually become one of the most widely used vegetables.

In fact, the world is still debating whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. According to botany, it belongs to fruits, but according to cooking it belongs to vegetables and is considered as such. Even the US Supreme Court ruled on May 10, 1893, that the tomato was a vegetable, accepting the argument that it was used for salad and main course, not for dessert.

The Anglo-Saxons, on the other hand, have long been hesitant to accept tomatoes or not. At the end of the 19th century, there were still cookbooks in which it was recommended to boil the tomato for at least three hours to protect the food from possible toxic effects.

Only in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century the tomato enters the market and began to be sold in large quantities.