tomato-hist-art - 2/1/99 "You say tomato I say Xitomatl" by Lord Xaviar the Eccentric. NOTE: See also the files: tomatoes-msg, peppers-msg, root-veg-msg, vegetables-msg, maize-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This article was submitted to me by the author for inclusion in this set of files, called StefanŐs Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org Copyright to the contents of this file remains with the author. While the author will likely give permission for this work to be reprinted in SCA type publications, please check with the author first or check for any permissions granted at the end of this file. Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: Stefan li Rous stefan@florilegium.org ************************************************************************ You say Tomato I say Xitomatl By Da`ved Man of Letters Lord Xaviar the Eccentric. The tomato's origins are believed to be somewhere in the west coast highlands of South America. A wild variety can still be found growing in Peru, Ecuador and Norther Chile. The method by which the tomato and its relatives traveled northward into Meso-America is not documentable. This is due to the total lack of Archeological evidence. The Aztecs cultivated and cross bred the plants to produce the multi-celled fruit we know today, although theirs did not have the smooth skin of modern tomato cultivars. The tomato also migrated to the Galapagos Islands, this is believed to have happened by turtles after ingesting the fruit. Tomatoes had made their first appearance as weeds in prehistoric times, but careful cultivation and chance mutation had increased both yield and varieties by the time Hernandez Cortes and his Spanish army reached Mexico in 1519. Unlike many other New World fruits and vegetables, the cultivated tomato was found only in Central America. (Smith, 15). Tomatoes were utilized by Native Central Americans at every stage of growth; thin shavings of the green and unripe fruit were incorporated in many dishes, while the ripe fruits were mixed with chillis to make a strong-tasting sauce (Salsa?) to go with cooked beans. This sauce is documented by Bernardino Sahagu'n, a Franciscan Priest, He wrote (around 1530) that the Natives served it with seafood, fowl, and other meats. The first tomatoes to appear in Europe (in the 1520's) were, so far as can be determined were lumpy reddish ones. Though Pietro Andrae Matthioli (Italian herbalist) wrote (in 1544) about mala aurea (golden apples), describing them as "flattened like the melrose apple and segmented, green at first and when ripe of a golden color." This is considered the first known European reference to the tomato. The Problem with this is all explorers notes and herbalist who were in the New World at this time all mention the Natives using red tomatoes exclusively. Melchioris Guilandini (Guilandinus), the second prefect of the Padua Botanical Garden, gives us documentation for the arrival of the red tomato in the 1520's.(1) This source conflicts with the name given to them by a number of different sources. In several languages the tomato was called pomodoro (from the Italian) or pomme d'amour (trench), meaning respectively golden fruit and love fruit. The Aztecs name for the tomato, was 'xitomatl' which means large tomatl. The tomatl (called Tomatillo today) is a small green (often yellowish), sour tasting fruit similar to the tomato. The Spaniards, called them both tomate (from the Nahuatl tomatl), which led to confusion as to which plant was the tomato. It was accepted into their diet along with mosr introductions from their American empire. Its from this that the modern common name was derived. Its botanical name, Lycopersicum esculentum, means "edible wolf peach" (Reed 172). The closest the tomato comes to golden in color is the yellow or whitish varieties of tomato that exist in the Americas. The natives and explorers who found them have never been noted as mentioning them for useion as an aphrodisiac. Dr Rudolf Grewe delivered at a symposium (and wrote a paper in 1986) in Konya, Turkey, that has solved this little mystery. He emphasizes that the tomato is in the same family (Solanaceae) as the eggplant. The eggplant was called pomme des Mours, fruit of the Moors, because it was a favorite vegetable of the Arabs, and this was mispronounced as pomme d'amour. A similar mispronouncing made it pomodoro in Italian, which it what it is still called. (Foster, 7) This begins to explains why the tomato was given the Italian name pomi d'oro. Rembertus Dodoenaeus's Cruydy-Boeck, (first published in Antwerp, 1554) contains (in later editions) illustrations with a flat top and bottom and numerous lobes or indentations around the sides, which gave it a star like appearance. The tomato has been cultivated and carefull bred over the centuries to the conventional smooth skinned varieties enjoyed in the modern world. The number of original types is sketchy, but is believed to have been five or six. This has grown to several hundreds and continues to g as fads come and go. Dodoen makes repeated references to the fruit's acidic taste to reinforce the classification of tomatoes as a fruit. The classification of the tomato as a fruit was challenged by certain botanists (until the late 19th cent) because the very high acid prevented the tomato's use like a fruit. The use of the tomato in and as a sauce is documented in 1590, by Jose de Acosta in his Historia natural y moral de las Indias (published in Seville). Acosta does not give recipes as such but gives his observations on Native South American usage. He is quoted as stating that tomatoes were "cold and very wholesome" and "full of juice, which gives a good taste to sauce, and they are good to eat."(Smith, 15). This is unusual as Pietro A. Matthioli wrote (in 1544) that the golden apples are to be cooked like eggplants; fried in olive oil with salt and pepper. This might give credence to the theories that the Italians adopted the tomato more readily than the Spanish. Around 1595, Gregorio de los Rios, a priest who worked in the botanical gardens at Aranjuez, Spain, described tomatoes such: "It is said that they are good for sauces." This sounds like Rios never tasted them himself. This may or may not be the case as he makes no mention of them in further writings. The cookbooks (of Spain), written at this time have no mention of the tomato as use as cooked food. It is not until some time around 1608 that we can find tomatoes being listed in a salad recipe with cucumbers from Seville. Even with the above reference the first cookbook containing tomato recipes wasn't published (in Naples) until 1692. These recipes are noted as being Spanish in their origin. This information does tend to cast doubt on the myth that tomatoes were not eaten "because they are members of the NIGHTSHADE FAMILY." Even though they were classified (by Matthioli) as being related to the Mandrake. Mandrake is mentioned in the Catholic Bible, in Hebrew it was called dudaim, or "love apples or love plants." The Central American natives have been documented as having enjoyed tomatoes, without injury, except for some understandable stomach distress. This might be better explained from the large use of chilles, included in their tomato recipes. The historical references to a plant not being eaten for the above stated reason, is the potato. The potatoes above ground growth does resemble its more deadly cousin, deadly nightshade (both members of the Solanaceae family). And might have caused the death of the unwary domesticated cow, pig, goat or sheep. The tomato was not grown in England until the 1590, even though they were in Continental Europe since the 1540's. John Gerard (Herball) wrote that he considered the entire plant to be "of ranke and stinking savour." He wrote this opinion along with the false understanding that the origin of the golden apple or apples of love was either Spain or Italy. He further states that tomatoes were eaten in abudance, "boiled with pepper, salt and oile." John Parkinson, the apothecary to King James I and botanist for King Charles I, proclaimed that, while love apples were eaten by the people in the hot contries to "coole and quench the heate and thirst of the hot stomaches," British gardeners grew them only for curiositnd for the amorous aspect or beauty of the fruit. (Jackson, 14)(Gerard, 275-6). WORKS CITED Coyle, L Patrick; The World Encyclopedia of Food; Facts on file, NY. 1982. Elkort, Martin; The Secret Life of Food; Jeremy P. Tarcher, LA. Ca. 1991. Foster, Nelson., Linda S. Cordell Editors; Chilies to Chocolate: food the Americas gave the world; The Univ. of Arizona Press, Tucson. 1992. Gerard, John; Herball Grun, Bernard; The Timetables of History 3rd edition; Simon and Schuster, NY. 1991. Hale, William Harlan; The Horizon Cookbook and Illustrated History of Eating and Drinking through the Ages; American Heritage Pub. Co.Inc, Doubleday and Co. Inc. NY. 1968. Lacey, Richard W.; Hard to Swallow; A brief history of food; Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994. Leopold, A. C., and R. Ardrey; Toxic substances in plants and the food habits of early man. Science 176; p 512-13. 1972. Luckwill, Leonard C.; The Genus Lycopersicon: An Historical, Biological and TaxSurvey of the Wild and Cultivated Tomatoes; Aberdeen Univ. Studies # 120 (Aberdeen Univ. Press. 1943. McCue, George A.; "The History of the Use of the Tomato: An Annotated Bibliography"; in Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 39 Nov. 1952. Di pedanio Dioscoride anazarbeo libri cinque della historia; By Pietro Andrae Matthioli (1544). Mcgee, Harold; On Food and Cooking; Macmillian Pub. Co., NY. 1984. Peterson, T. Sarah; Acquired Taste; The French Origins of Modern Cooking; Cornell Univ. Press. Ithaca. NY. 1994. Ritchie, Carson I.A.; Food in Civilization: How History Has Been Affected by Human Tastes; Beaufort Books, NY. 1981 Salaman, Radcliff; The History and Social Influence of the Potato; Rev. ed. with a new introduction by J.G. Hawkes. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1986. Smith, Andrew F.; The Tomato in America; Early History, Culture, and Cookery; Univ. of S. Carolina Press, Columbia, SC. 1994. Sokolov, Raymond; Why We Eat What We Eat: How Columbus Changed the Way the World Eats; Simon & Schuster, NY. 1993. Tannahill, Reay; Food in History; Crown Pub., NY. 1989. Tousaint-Samat, Maguelonne {Anthea Bell, trans} History of Food; Blackwell, Cambridge, Mass. 1992. Toxicants Occurring Naturally in Foods; 2nd Ed., National Academy of Sciences, Washington D.C. 1973. Wilson, C.Anne; Food and Drink in Britain; Chicago Academy Pub. Chicago. 1991. Notes 1 Squalermo, Semplici, 217; Asa Gray and J. hammond Trumbull, Review of DeDandoll's Origin of Cultivated Plants with Annotations upon Certain American Species," American Journal of Science, 26 (August 1883): 128; Camerarius, Hortus, 70; Guilandini, Papyrus, 90; J.A.Jenkins, "The Origin of the Cultivated Tomato," Economic Botany, 2 (October-December 1948): 379-92. ------ Copyright 1997 by Lord Xaviar the Eccentric, . Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited and is notified by email. If this article is reprinted in a publication, I would appreciate a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan. Edited by Mark S. Harris tomato-hist-art