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Next to onions, tomatoes are one of the most
important fresh ingredients in the kitchen. In Mediterranean cooking,
they are fundamental. Along with garlic and olive oil, they form the
basis of so many Italian, Spanish and Provencal recipes that it is hard
to find many dishes in which they are not included.
Tomatoes are related to potatoes, eggplants
and sweet and chili peppers, and all are members of the nightshade
family. Some very poisonous members of this family may well have
deterred our ancestors from taking to tomatoes. Indeed, the leaves of
tomatoes are toxic and can result in very bad stomach aches.
Tomatoes are native to western South
America. By the time of the Spanish invasions in the sixteenth century,
they were widely cultivated throughout the whole of South America and
Mexico. Hernan Cortes, conqueror of the Aztecs, sent the first tomato
plants, a yellow variety, to Spain. However, people did not
instinctively take to this "golden apple". English horticulturists
mostly grew them as ornamental plants to adorn their gardens and had
little positive to say about them as food. Spain is recorded as the
first country to use tomatoes in cooking, stewing them with oil and
seasoning. Italy followed suit, but elsewhere they were treated with
suspicion.
The first red tomatoes arrived in Europe in
the eighteenth century, brought to Italy by two Jesuit priests. They
were gradually accepted in northern Europe where, by the mid-nineteenth
century, they were grown extensively, eaten raw, cooked or used for
pickles.
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