Tomatoes were never poisonous, but for a long time many Europeans treated them as if they might be. The plant arrived from the Americas in the 16th century, and European botanists filed it alongside its nightshade relatives, among them deadly belladonna and mandrake. Italians were among the first Europeans to taste it, yet it took roughly two centuries for the tomato to move from curiosity to cooking pot. Then Naples put it on pizza and pasta, and Italian cooking was never the same. It is one of the great makeovers in food history.
A small fruit from the Andes and Mexico
Wild tomatoes are small berries native to western South America. It was in Mesoamerica, in what is now Mexico, that the plant was domesticated and became an everyday food, long before Europeans arrived. The Spanish word tomate comes from the Nahuatl tomatl. Spanish accounts of Aztec markets describe tomatoes of many sizes and colours, sold alongside chillies and made into sauces. After the fall of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, in 1521, Spanish ships carried seeds back across the Atlantic. Within a few decades the tomato was growing in Spain and Italy.
Golden apples with a bad reputation
Italy has the first written European record. In 1544 the Sienese physician Pietro Andrea Mattioli described a new kind of fruit, flattened like an apple, that ripened from green to gold. A decade later he recorded its name, pomi d'oro, golden apples, which survives as the Italian pomodoro. The name may mean that some early varieties were yellow, but no one can be sure. Mattioli noted that some people ate the fruit fried in oil with salt and pepper. A household record from 1548 notes a basket of tomatoes being delivered to the household of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence.
A taste, however, is not the same as trust. The tomato's family, the nightshades, included plants that could kill, and its leaves have a strong, rank smell. Many physicians followed the old theory of the four humours and were wary of cold, watery foods. In England, the herbalist John Gerard grew tomatoes and described them in his 1597 Herball, but judged them to be of little nourishment and bad for the body. Across much of northern Europe the plant was grown for a long time as an ornamental curiosity rather than as food.
Two legends that won't lie down
The pewter plates. According to a popular story, wealthy Europeans died after eating tomatoes because the acidic fruit leached lead from their pewter plates, which gave tomatoes the reputation of a "poison apple". There is no solid historical evidence for this. Vinegar, wine and fruit would all have done the same to pewter, and none of them was blamed.
The courthouse steps. According to another story, in 1820 Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson stood on the courthouse steps in Salem, New Jersey, and ate a basket of tomatoes before a crowd waiting for him to drop dead. He didn't. Nor, it seems, did anyone write about it at the time: historians have found no contemporary account, and the tale appears to have been told much later. Both stories are fun to repeat, as long as you repeat them as legends.
How Naples fell for the tomato
The tomato found its true home in southern Italy, which spent much of the 16th and 17th centuries under Spanish rule. In 1692 Antonio Latini, a steward working in Naples, published a recipe for tomato sauce "in the Spanish style", made with roasted, chopped tomatoes, herbs and chilli. It is among the earliest tomato recipes printed in Italy. A century later the Neapolitan cook Vincenzo Corrado was giving tomatoes a respectable place in his books, including stuffed tomatoes.
The tomato's real champions, though, were ordinary Neapolitans. Tomatoes were cheap and grew generously in the volcanic soil around Vesuvius. Families preserved them by drying them into a dense paste, or by hanging whole clusters from balconies to last through the winter. Tomato went onto the city's pizza. In 1839, the Neapolitan writer Ippolito Cavalcanti published a recipe for vermicelli with tomatoes that is often cited as one of the first for pasta with tomato sauce. The golden apple had become the red heart of the southern kitchen.
From Naples to the world, in a tin
Industry did the rest. In 1856 Francesco Cirio began preserving vegetables in tins in Turin, and tomato canning became a major Italian business. The long, fleshy San Marzano tomato, grown near Vesuvius, became a byword for quality and is now protected by a PDO (Protected Designation of Origin). As millions of Italians emigrated, tinned tomatoes followed them abroad, and the sauce they had carried to New York, Buenos Aires and Melbourne became many people's idea of what Italian food tastes like.
Cooking with tomatoes today
- Keep ripe tomatoes out of the fridge. Cold dulls their flavour and makes the flesh mealy. Refrigerate them only once they are cut or starting to turn.
- Salt salad tomatoes early. Ten to fifteen minutes before serving, salt them and let their juices run. Those juices become the dressing, which is the whole secret of a good panzanella.
- Out of season, reach for a tin. Whole plum tomatoes picked ripe and tinned in summer often taste better than pale winter tomatoes from a shop.
- Keep the classic sauce simple. Warm sliced garlic gently in olive oil, add tinned tomatoes crushed by hand, simmer for 20 to 30 minutes and finish with basil.
- Add sugar only if you must. A pinch can soften very sharp tomatoes, but a slow simmer usually sweetens them on its own.
| Tinned or jarred | What it is | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Whole peeled plum tomatoes (pelati) | Peeled tomatoes packed whole in their juice | Sauces you crush by hand; long simmers |
| Passata | Raw tomatoes sieved smooth, without skins or seeds | Smooth sauces, soups, a quick pizza base |
| Chopped tomatoes (polpa) | Diced tomato in juice | Quick sauces, stews, bean dishes |
| Tomato purée or paste | Tomatoes cooked down to a dense paste | A spoonful for depth; fry it briefly in oil first |
From our books
The tomato runs all the way through The Vegetarian Kitchen. It has Naples' simplest gift, the Spaghetti al Pomodoro with Basil, and a Rich Tomato Sauce (Marinara) worth making in batches. In summer there is the Panzanella with Sourdough & Ripe Tomatoes, where salted tomato juice soaks into stale bread, and the Caprese Salad with Basil & Aged Balsamic. Search the recipe finder for tomato dishes from every book, and use our healthy pantry checklist to keep the right tins on the shelf.
Questions people ask
Were tomatoes ever thought to be poisonous?
Yes. Many Europeans were suspicious of them for a long time, mainly because they belong to the nightshade family. The ripe fruit is perfectly safe to eat. The most famous "poison" stories, about pewter plates and a tomato-eating colonel in 1820, are legends rather than documented history.
Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?
Botanically, a tomato is a fruit, specifically a berry. In the kitchen it is used as a vegetable. In 1893 the US Supreme Court even ruled, in Nix v. Hedden, that tomatoes should be taxed as vegetables.
When did Italians start cooking with tomatoes?
Some Italians were eating tomatoes by the mid-16th century, and printed Italian tomato recipes appear by 1692. The tomato became central to southern Italian cooking during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Why is the tomato called pomodoro in Italian?
The name comes from pomo d'oro, golden apple, the name recorded by Pietro Andrea Mattioli in the 1550s. It may mean that some of the first tomatoes grown in Italy were yellow.