The Golden Apples of Cooking
Love apples. Pomi d’oro. These are other names for one of our favorite vegetables. Or should it be favorite fruits? (More about this later.) In either case, our subject is the tomato.
Sidney Carlisle’s article Tomatoes: Making the Most of the Summer Crop will fill you in on the basics. I’ll provide some tomato history, trivia, and recipes.
Tomato History
Most culinary historians believe that tomatoes are native to the Andes region of Peru and Northern Chile. In time, the plant migrated to Central America and on to Mexico. The word tomato is thought to have come from the Aztec word xitomatl, meaning large tomato.
Europe discovered tomatoes courtesy of Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortés, who conquered Mexico in 1519. Tomatoes then spread into Spain, Italy, the Philippines and Asia. The road to Britain and North America, however, would prove a bit bumpy.
