Ingredient: Tomatoes
Category: Vegetables
Season: All
The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a plant in the Solanaceae or nightshade family, as are its close cousins tobacco, chili peppers, potato, and eggplant.
The tomato is native to Central, South, and southern North America from Mexico to Peru
The word tomato derives from a word in the Nahuatl language, tomatl . The specific name, lycopersicum, means "wolf-peach" (compare the related species S. lycocarpum, whose scientific name means "wolf-fruit", common name "wolf-apple").
Two modern tomato cultivar groups , one represented by the Matt's Wild Cherry tomato, the other by currant tomatoes, both originate by recent domestication of the wild tomato plants apparently native to eastern Mexico.
In Britain
The tomato plant was not grown in England until the 1590s, according to Smith.
One of the earliest cultivators was John Gerard, a barber-surgeon. Gerard's Herbal, published in 1597 and largely plagiarized from continental sources, is also one of the earliest discussions of the tomato in England.
Gerard knew that the tomato was eaten in both Spain and Italy . Nonetheless, he believed that it was poisonous (tomato leaves and stems contain poisonous glycoalkaloids, but the fruit is safe).
Gerard's views were influential , and the tomato was considered unfit for eating (though not necessarily poisonous) for many years in Britain and its North American colonies.
By the mid-1700s , however, tomatoes were widely eaten in Britain; and before the end of that century, the Encyclopædia Britannica stated that the tomato was "in daily use" in soups, broths, and as a garnish.
In Victorian times , cultivation reached an industrial scale in glasshouses, most famously in Worthing.
Pressure for housing land in the 1930s to 1960s saw the industry move west to Littlehampton , and to the market gardens south of Chichester.
The British tomato industry has been decimated over the past fifteen years or so , as cheap imports from Spain have flooded the supermarkets.
Cultivation and uses
The tomato is now grown worldwide for its edible fruits , with thousands of cultivars having been selected with varying fruit types, and for optimum growth in differing growing conditions.
Cultivated tomatoes vary in size from cherry tomatoes, about the same 1–2 cm size as the wild tomato, up to beefsteak tomatoes 10 cm or more in diameter.
The most widely grown commercial tomatoes tend to be in the 5–6 cm diameter range .
Most cultivars produce red fruit ; but a number of cultivars with yellow, orange, pink, purple, green, or white fruit are also available. Multicolored and striped fruit can also be quite striking.
Tomatoes grown for canning are often elongated, 7–9 cm long and 4–5 cm diameter; they are known as plum tomatoes.
Tomatoes are one of the most common garden fruits in the United States and, along with zucchini, have a reputation for outproducing the needs of the grower.
As in most sectors of agriculture, there is increasing demand in developed countries for organic tomatoes, as well as heirloom tomatoes, to make up for flavour and texture faults in commercial tomatoes.
Quite a few seed merchants and banks provide a large selection of heirloom seeds .
Tomato seeds are occasionally organically produced as well , but only a small percentage of organic crop area is grown with organic seed.
Modern uses of tomatoes
Tomatoes are now eaten freely throughout the world, and their consumption is believed to benefit the heart among other things.
Lycopene, one of nature's most powerful antioxidants, is present in tomatoes, and, especially when tomatoes are cooked, has been found beneficial in preventing prostate cancer. However, other research contradicts this claim.
Tomato extract branded as Lycomato, is now also being promoted for treatment of high blood pressure.
Though it is botanically a fruit, the tomato is nutritionally categorised as a vegetable (see below). Since "vegetable" is not a botanical term, there is no contradiction in a plant part being a fruit botanically while still being considered a vegetable.
Tomatoes are used extensively in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine, with Italian being the most notable.
The tomato has an acidic property that is used to bring out other flavours. This same acidity makes tomatoes especially easy to preserve in home as tomato sauce or paste.
The first to commercially can tomatoes was Harrison Woodhull Crosby in Jamesburg, New Jersey.
Tomato juice is often canned and sold as a beverage.
Unripe green tomatoes can also be used to make salsa, be breaded and fried, or pickled.
The town of Buñol, Spain, annually celebrates La Tomatina, a festival centred on an enormous tomato fight.
Known for its tomato growth and production, the Mexican state of Sinaloa takes the tomato as its symbol
Culinary uses of tomatoes include:
Unripe tomatoes on a vine, good for pickling
Tomato paste
Tomato purée
Tomato pie
Gazpacho (Andalusian cuisine)
Ketchup
Pa amb tomàquet (Catalan cuisine)
Pizza
Tomato sauce (common in Italian cuisine)
Sundried tomatoes
Fruit or vegetable?
Botanically, a tomato is the ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant : therefore it is a fruit or, more precisely, a berry.
However, the tomato is not as sweet as those foodstuffs usually called fruits and, from a culinary standpoint, it is typically served as part of a salad or main course of a meal, as are vegetables, rather than at dessert, as are fruits.
As noted above , the term "vegetable" has no botanical meaning and is purely a culinary term. |