The tomato was once called the wolf peach, a name coined by the ancient physician Galen for a plant he could never identify, yet today that same name defines the most widely consumed fruit on Earth. This botanical misnomer set the stage for centuries of confusion, as the fruit's connection to the nightshade family led Europeans to believe it was poisonous. For decades, the tomato was grown solely as an ornamental curiosity, its vibrant red fruit admired in gardens but never tasted. The Spanish, who first brought the fruit from the Americas to Europe in the 16th century, were the first to eat it, but the rest of the continent remained skeptical. It was not until the early 17th century that the tomato began to appear in Spanish cookbooks, and even then, it took another hundred years for the fruit to be accepted as food in Italy. The journey from a feared poison to a culinary staple required a complete cultural shift, one that began with the Aztecs who called it tomatl and used it in sauces long before the Spanish ever set foot in the New World.
From Aztec Markets To European Gardens
In the bustling markets of Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs cultivated a wide variety of tomatoes, ranging from small cherry types to large, lumpy serpent-shaped fruits that were the ancestors of modern varieties. Bernardino de Sahagún, a Spanish friar, documented the scene in the 16th century, describing how the Aztecs served sauces made from tomatoes of all colors, from the brightest red to the deepest yellow. When Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztecs in 1521, he inadvertently triggered the Columbian Exchange, sending the tomato from Mexico to Europe within a few years. The fruit arrived in Italy, where it was initially dismissed as a decorative oddity. Giovanvettorio Soderini, a Florentine aristocrat, wrote in the 1540s that the tomato was sought only for its beauty, grown in flower beds rather than vegetable patches. It was not until 1692 that the first cookbook with tomato recipes appeared in Naples, and even then, the recipes were likely borrowed from Spanish sources. The tomato's transition from a decorative plant to a kitchen essential was slow, hindered by the belief that it was toxic and the fact that it grew close to the ground, suggesting low status to the peasant population.The Poisonous Fruit And The Love Apple
For centuries, the tomato was considered unfit for human consumption in Britain and its North American colonies, a belief so deeply ingrained that it was called the love apple, a name derived from a French misreading of the Italian phrase for the Moors' apple. John Gerard, a barber-surgeon who published his Herbal in 1597, claimed the tomato was poisonous, a view that influenced generations of gardeners. By 1820, tomatoes were still described as being grown for their singularity of appearance, while their use in cooking was associated with exotic Italian or Jewish cuisine. The fear was so pervasive that in 1897, W.H. Garrison recalled how tomatoes were dubbed globes of the devil and shunned by the public. It was not until the mid-18th century that tomatoes began to be cultivated on Carolina plantations, and even then, they were grown more as ornamental plants than as food. The turning point came with the efforts of breeders like Alexander W. Livingston, who developed smooth, uniform varieties that could be sold commercially. By the late 19th century, the tomato had shed its reputation as a poison and had become a staple of American agriculture, with half of the major varieties being the result of the Livingstons' breeding abilities.