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The first record of tomatoes growing in England dates to the 1590s (though Wales has a slightly earlier claim). It isn’t until the 1720s, however, that recipes for their preparation start to appear. The delay has been blamed on fear of foods from outisde Europe, on the humoral theory, on piety and superstition, and probably lots of other factors too. While all those explanations have obvious attractions, the reality is much more prosaic than that.
Dr Serin Quinn tracked the true history of the tomato in England and found that temperature and technology, along with religious persecution, are much more convincing.
Notes
- Serin Quinn’s paper on The Tomato-Chili Nexus: Reconstructing the Mesoamerican Influence on Europe through Taste and Method was my introduction to her work.
- As mentioned, you may also find Rebecca Earle on The true history of the potato in Europe an interesting listen.
- Here is the transcript.
- Cover image lifted from The Gardener’s Chronicle, banner from Hortus Eystettensis, 1640, at Wikimedia
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In the previous issue I linked to a piece by Thin Lei Win that shed some light on Commercial Determinants of Health, the idea that food companies (and others) use “strategies and approaches … to promote products and choices that are detrimental to health”. It’s probably just a coincidence, but blow me if The Guardian […]
[…] latest episode of Eat This Podcast explores why the tomato, first recorded in England in the 1590s, took more than a century to become […]
Today I happened upon this from Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book (pub 1978):
‘Every week most of us will be making use of tomatoes in one form or another several times. This is a late conversion in England. For centuries tomatoes were feared as being chill to the stomach, a possible cause of gout and cancer, or excessive sexual appetite, in every way unsuitable to the national stomach. Their great advance began after the FirstWorld War, I would say, and has reached a peak in the last 15 years.’
Love this extension of your interesting conversation!
Nice to hear from you! I think to some extent JG was repeating the conventional wisdom in both the reasons given for the tomato’s late adoption and in the timing of the great advance. She does have some good recipes though, as I recall.
@etp I went through a period when I was reading some late 19th and early 20th century books scanned to epub formats.
One was a guide on specifically how to build a coal-fired greenhouse and grow tomatoes for the New York market.
It’s pretty interesting, and a piece of the past I did not know.
Bridgy Response
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