Tomato fruit in United States

English herbalist William Salmon, in his book Botanologia completed in 1710 revealed that he had seen tomatoes growing in Carolina. This is the first known referee to the tomato in the North American colonies.

There were several different theories regarding the presence of tomatoes in United States. Prior to September 1820, American considered the tomato poisonous. Robert Gibbon Johnson had imported tomato seeds from South America and planted them in his garden. When they produced fruit-bearing vines, he announced that he intended to eat a tomato on the courthouse steps.

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.

In the early 1800s, patent medicine hucksters began bottling tomato lo extract as an elixir, advertising that it would cure ills ranging from constipation chronic cough to the common cold.

Their boosterism sparked a national tomato crazed, enabling farmers near big cities to make fortunes. 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.

In 1893, the US Supreme Court settled the fruit vs. vegetable question by ruling that the tomato was legally a vegetable for reason of commerce.
Tomato fruit in United States

The history of tomato

The tomato was originated in South America, in the areas surrounding the Andes Mountains, which includes parts of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and Colombia. Early tomatoes were similar to cherry tomatoes today.

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

History of tomato soup in America

Tomato soup is quintessential American comfort food, usually eaten with a grilled cheese sandwich.

Although tomatoes apparently were introduced into Florida in the 1600s, they made minimal impression on the dietary habits of Americans until two centuries later. The first tomato soup recipes were simply tomatoes added to basic vegetable soups.

By 1840s tomatoes were an important part of most cookery books, Modern Cookery, written by the British cookbook author Eliza Acton for publication in the United States, in 1845 contained several tomato recipes.

Between 1832 when N. M. K. Lee’s first tomato soup recipe was published and in 1841, when Lettice Bryan’s version published the multitude of other vegetable were left out and the purely tomato soup know today emerge. Lettice Bryan’s Kentucky Housewife feature more than twenty tomato recipes, including some for baked, broiled, stewed, fried and pickled tomatoes.

Andrew Smith in his The Tomato in America stated that tomatoes were used in soup at least as early as the mid-eighteenth century in colonial America.

In 1897, John T Dorrance created a process of condensing soup which involved removing half of the water from the soup to create a thicker consistency.

The first production in 1898 means reducing volume to make it lighter and more transportable, cheaper to can and yet convenient to cook was a new development of a specifically commercial commodity food.

History of tomato soup in America

History of Pizza

The actual term “pizza” begins to circulate in Italy for the first time in 997 in the Codex Cajetanus of Gaeta Italy.

The true “pizza napoletana” as it is understood in Naples is a disc of dough on which tomato is spread. This use of the term pizza was born after a specific historical event: the discovery in 1492 of the New World by Christopher Columbus. It was precisely the Genoese navigator who brought the tomato plant to Europe.

In 1596, the tomato plant was exported to Naples by Spain where it was used as an ornamental plant. The first historical indication of the use of the tomato in the kitchen is found in the “Cuoco Galante (Naples - Ed. Raimondiane 1733) by Vincenzo Corrado Oritano” head chef of Prince Emanuel of Francavilla. The same Corrado in a successive tract on the foods most commonly used in Naples declares that the tomato was used to top both pizza and pasta, thus grouping together these two traditional products which helped to make Naples’ culinary fortune and establish its place in the history of world cuisine. From this information, one can reconstruct the appearance of “pizza napoletana” as a disc of dough topped with tomato.

The first pizzerias, without doubt, were born in Naples and until the middle of the 20th century the product was exclusively a commodity of Naples and its pizzerias. From 1700 various botteghe were active in the city, called «pizzerie», whose fame arrived so far as the King of Naples, Ferdinando di Borbone, who in order to try this typical dish of the Neapolitan tradition, violated court etiquette by entering into one of the most renowned pizzerias. From that moment, the «pizzeria» was transformed into a fashionable locale, a place designated exclusively to the production of the «pizza».

The most popular and famous pizzas in Naples were the «marinara» born in 1734 and the «margherita» from 1796-1810, which was offered to the Queen of Italy on a visit to Naples in 1889 precisely for the color of its condiments (tomato, mozzarella and basil) which brought to mind the flag of Italy. Over time, pizzerias were born throughout the cities of Italy and even abroad, but every one of these, if in a city diverse from Naples, always tied its very existence to the phrase «pizzeria Napoletana» or, alternatively, used a term which could evoke in some way its tie with Naples, where for almost 300 years this product has remained virtually unaltered.

In 1984, in the month of May, nearly all the old-line pizzaioli (pizzamakers) in Naples participated in the creation of a brief disciplinary manual signed by all and registered by an official act by the notary Antonio Carannante of Naples.
Food History