Item Detail

The American
Tomato

Chances are good you ate something tomato today. Fresh, in a sauce or soup, on pizza, as ketchup—tomatoes pervade American cuisine, to the point that the average individual eats 18 pounds of fresh tomatoes and 70 pounds of processed tomatoes in a year. How a greenish, marble-sized fruit from Peru came to be an indispensable part of backyard gardening and American cooking is a complicated, fascinating story.

    The first tomatoes grew wild in the hot, dry, Andean region of western South America—an area that is now divided among Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, and Chile. The Incas and other natives of the region were extremely sophisticated farmers, but they seem to have ignored the hardy wild tomato as a cultivated crop. There's no evidence that they ate tomatoes, and there isn't even a word for the plant in the native languages of the region.

    Millennia ago, the wild tomato made its way north into Central America, perhaps as seeds carried by birds. The Aztecs and other natives here were also extremely sophisticated farmers. They not only readily adopted the tomato but also cultivated it assiduously and bred a number of varieties with different colors and shapes. The difference in attitude toward the original weedy plant may be because the Aztecs were already fond of a native fruit called the tomatl. These tart, greenish orbs covered with a thin, papery husk are now called tomatillos; they remain an important ingredient in Mexican cooking. The Aztecs called the new fruit xitomatl, or big tomatl.

    The Aztecs were certainly growing tomatoes as an important part of their diet by the time Hernán Cortés conquered them in 1519. The many Spanish conquistadors, priests, and administrators who followed were very interested in the native foods. Finding the tomate, as they called it, to be edible and enjoyable, they spread the plant across their empire, introducing it in the Caribbean, the Philippines, and Europe, and reintroducing it to Peru as a cultivated crop.

    By the 1540s, tomatoes were being grown in Europe, probably more as curiosities than as crops. The first written European reference to them dates to 1544 in an herbal by the Italian botanist Pietro Mattioli. He described the new fruits as resembling mala aurea, or "golden apples," and classified them in the mandrake family. Ten years later, in a revised edition of his herbal, Mattioli translated mala aurea into vernacular Italian and called them pomi d'ori, which survives in modern Italian as pomidoro.

    Almost simultaneously, the tomato was being called poma amoris, or "love apple," by other herbalists. The association probably comes from the tomato's relative the mandrake, whose root resembles entwined lovers and was traditionally considered an aphrodisiac. Some, however, seem to have associated the tomato with the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Actually, almost any New World food at the time was rumored to be an aphrodisiac. Hot chocolate was thought to be so stimulating that monks were forbidden from drinking it. In Shakespeare's time, potatoes were a novelty food considered arousing. That's why Falstaff said, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, "Let the sky rain potatoes ... let there be a tempest of provocations, I will shelter me here." Is it surprising, then, that a fruit as exotic, colorful, tender, full of seeds and juice, and delicious as the tomato would be considered highly erotic?

    On the other hand, the love apple idea may come from the words pomi de Moro, or "Moor's apple," another early name for the tomato in Italy. This designation supposedly comes from the hazy notion that Moors (at that time almost a generic word for denizens of the western Mediterranean region, including Spain) brought tomatoes with them when they put in at Italian ports. The words were misinterpreted by the French as pomme d'amour, or "love apple." This somewhat roundabout derivation is probably a folk etymology—it's far too artfully contrived to be real.

    Botanically, everybody was on the right track, even if they were creating confusion at the same time. The tomato is indeed related to the mandrake plant. Tomatoes, potatoes, petunias, tobacco, eggplants, mandrake, and the many varieties of nightshade are all members of the large and very diverse botanical superfamily known as Solanaceae. Within this family, tomatoes belong to the genus Lycopersicon, which literally means "wolf peach." This peculiar name alludes to a medieval remedy, a medicinal yellow liquid derived from an entirely different plant found in North Africa. European herbalists knew of the highly prized liquid, but they obviously had never seen the source. The name attached itself to the new plant and has stuck ever since, despite its illogic.

    Within the Lycopersicon genus are nine different species, including L. esculentum—literally "edible wolf peach," or what we today call the tomato. The scientific name was first used in April 16, 1768, when it was published in Philip Miller's Garden Dictionary. Miller, the superintendent of the Chelsea Physick Garden in England, was the first to recognize that tomatoes are distinctly different from eggplants and other members of the Solanaceae family, and he was the first to place the tomato in a family of its own. Today, his contribution is recognized by the formal scientific name of the tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum P. Miller, Gard. Dict. ed. 8. N. 2. 16 April 1768.

    Tomatoes were eaten in Europe as soon as they were introduced. Mattioli said in his herbal that tomatoes were fried in oil, and other early sources also mentioned ways to eat tomatoes. The earliest-known recipes for cooking tomatoes didn't appear until 1692, in a cookbook published in Naples, but obviously tomatoes were being widely eaten in Italy, Spain, and Portugal well before then.

    Sadly, in England the tomato suffered from the bad opinion of the influential herbalist John Gerard. In his herbal, published in 1592, he said the tomato came from Italy, which of course made it immediately suspect. He also said it was poisonous, writing that "the whole plant is of a ranke and stinking savour." In fairness to Gerard, the leaves and stems of tomatoes are indeed poisonous—it's not so far-fetched to think the fruit is as well. Gerard may also have heard how Sir Walter Raleigh presented Queen Elizabeth with some potato plants from the New World. The queen's cook threw away the roots, boiled the poisonous greens, and served them. Potatoes were then banned from the royal table. It would not be surprising if the related tomato came under similar deep suspicion. For a long time in England, the tomato remained a greenhouse ornamental said to have some medicinal uses but to be unwholesome as a food.

    Even so, tomatoes gradually gained a foothold in England. They're mentioned in passing as a food in various sources, but the first recipe using "love apples" only appeared in 1758, in The Art of Cookery, by Hannah Glasse. This early cookbook was very popular and went through innumerable editions over the next several decades. Tomatoes became increasingly popular in Britain after that; they were firmly established in the cuisine by the 1780s.

    The tomato came to the North American colonies by a number of circuitous routes. The first written reference to tomatoes mentioned them growing in what is now South Carolina in the 1680s. They may have gotten there via Spanish settlements farther south, in what are now Georgia and Florida, or via European settlers who brought the seeds with them from England or France. It's also possible that the tomato arrived via trade with the various Caribbean islands, where tomatoes were widely cultivated.

    We'll never know for sure, of course. We do know that gardeners were regularly and enthusiastically growing tomatoes in South Carolina by the 1760s. Handwritten recipes using tomatoes start to turn up around the same time. Tomato cultivation gradually spread north, reaching the Philadelphia area and New York by the late 1790s. In Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and other points west, tomatoes were widely grown by the early 1800s. By the 1820s, tomatoes were being widely grown in New England as well.

    Tomato seeds were for sale in Philadelphia by 1800. Other nursery growers soon followed, and tomato seeds were readily available across the country by 1830. By 1835, at least fourteen varieties were available and serious breeding efforts were under way. By the 1850s, a smooth-skinned, solid variety called `Trophy' had been developed by Dr. Hand of Baltimore County and soon became very widespread. By 1863, Fearing Burr Jr. had described twenty-four varieties in his book The Field and Garden Vegetables of America.

    A new and very popular variety called `Paragon' was developed by Alexander Livingston (1821-1898) of Ohio in the late 1860s. `Paragon' is considered the first truly commercial tomato variety. Livingston went on to develop thirteen other important varieties between 1870 and 1893; the seed company he founded still exists.

    Imported British cookbooks with tomato recipes were known in the American colonies from the early 1800s. The first American cookbook to include tomato recipes was Mary Randolph's Virginia House-Wife, which appeared in 1824. Twelve recipes called for tomatoes, including ketchup, stewed tomatoes, and that favorite southern dish even today, okra and tomatoes. (A facsimile edition of this fascinating work is available from the University of South Carolina Press.) The next cookbook with tomato recipes was Lydia Maria Child's The Frugal Housewife, published in Boston in 1829. Another book, N. K. M. Lee's The Cook's Own Book, published in 1832, had twelve tomato recipes. Clearly, tomatoes were a common food item by the 1830s, but it took one more cookbook to establish them firmly on the American table. In 1837, Eliza Leslie published her enormously popular and influential Directions for Cookery. The first edition contained thirteen tomato recipes, while later editions, of which there were many, added another fifteen or so.

    After Leslie, recipes for tomato dishes were found everywhere—in cookbooks, in newspapers, and in the ladies' magazines and farm journals that began to proliferate after the introduction of cheap paper and steam-powered printing presses in the 1840s. In 1861, the editors of the immensely popular Godey's Lady's Book told their readers that the tomato was a "delicious and wholesome vegetable." Even so, they recommended cooking tomatoes for at least three hours; anything less, they warned, would produce "a sour porridge."

    The suspicion that tomatoes were poisonous lingered in some rural pockets, as did the belief that the fruits were edible but bad for the health. Most Americans, however, were more enlightened and happily ate tomatoes raw, cooked, and in ketchup. Thomas Jefferson wrote about tomato plantings in Virginia as early as 1782. While he was president, Jefferson was delighted to learn that fresh tomatoes were sold in Washington; in 1809, he began growing them himself at Monticello.

    One of the most durable and untrue legends in American culinary history says that in 1820, Robert Gibbon Johnson dramatically proved to the nation that tomatoes were not poisonous by publicly eating one on the courthouse steps of Salem, New Jersey. His bold feat supposedly launched the American tomato industry. As Andrew Smith exhaustively documented in his authoritative book The Tomato in America, there's barely a shred of truth to the story. That hasn't kept it from being widely repeated, of course, even in scholarly articles. The town of Salem holds an annual Robert Gibbon Johnson Day that reenacts the historic nonevent, which the media dutifully reports without mentioning the total lack of evidence for it. As Smith pointed out, there are hundreds of stories that attribute the introduction of the tomato to a particular individual.

    Still, the Robert Gibbon Johnson story does have an interesting kernel of truth. Johnson was an active member of the Salem County Agricultural Society, and he did recognize that tomatoes were a valuable agricultural commodity. By the late 1850s, tomatoes and tomato canning had become an important business in New Jersey.

The Tomato Business Today

Tomatoes in America are big business. The market falls into two categories: fresh and processing tomatoes. The line between the two is sharp—overall statistics for the total tomato industry are hard to find.

Fresh Tomatoes

    U.S. Department of Agriculture figures for fresh tomatoes in 1996 (the most recent year available as this book goes to press) show that 122,830 acres of tomatoes were planted, of which 118,760 were harvested. (The missing acres were presumably lost to various farming disasters.) The yield per acre was 26,000 pounds; the total production that year was 3,085,400,000, or nearly 3.1 billion, pounds. The total crop value was close to $880 million. (By way of comparison, the value of the head lettuce crop that year was about $980 million.) In all, Americans spend more than $2.5 billion annually on fresh tomatoes. In popularity at the supermarket, fresh tomatoes rank third, just behind potatoes and lettuce.

    Florida leads the nation in fresh tomato production, followed closely by California. As this breakdown shows, the remaining eight states among the top ten tomato producers are pitiful by comparison.

Top Ten States for Fresh Tomatoes, 1996