Presumably the cultivated species of tomato was carried from the slopes of the Andes northward into Central America and Mexico by prehistoric migration of Indians.
The Maya, an ancient civilization that live in southern Mexico between 250 AD and 950 AD were the first to cultivate the tomato plant. They called it tomatl or xtomatl.
In 1519, Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes arrived in the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan, where he discovered the tomato plant. Later he presented the King of Spain with tomato seeds.
The tomato first went to Europe, where it was used as an herbal as well as being eaten as food in Italy and Spain. It was also grown for its beauty.
In 1544 and Italian herbalist, Pietro Andrae Matthioli, published a reference to ‘golden apple’, which he described as ‘flattened like the melrose and segmented, green at first and when ripe of a golden color’.
This was the first known European reference to the tomato. A decade later, Leonhart Fuchs, a German doctor, produced the first known illustration of tomatoes, a colored woodcut showing that the fruit not only arrived in Europe with golden exteriors, as Matthioli’s name suggested, but also red skin and in many different shapes and sizes.
The tomato was consumed and cultivated by some Americans during the eighteenth century in all regions of the country, including the South, the Midwest, New England, California and the American West.
Tomatoes were used as food in New Orleans as early as 1812, doubtless though French influence; but it was another 20 to 25 years before they were grown for food in the northeastern part of the country.
During the 1820s the adoption of the tomato as a culinary product increased throughout the nation. By the 1839s it was fully integrated into American cookery.
The history of tomato
