The ‘Poison Apple’
By the mid-sixteenth century, the tomato was being given a cautious welcome into the Mediterranean kitchen. The first recorded account of the tomato was written by the household steward of Cosimo De Medici on October 21, 1548. The steward wrote to the Medici’s secretary, informing him that a basket of tomatoes, sent from the Duke’s estate at Torre del Gallo near Florence had arrived safely.
Those tomatoes may have been heading for the Duke’s kitchen. For in 1544, at the same time as he was drawing comparisons between the tomato and its poisonous cousins, Mattioli was also acknowledging that it was in fact edible. His Discorsi noted how some Italians had come to regard the South American fruits as a red or yellow aubergine, which could be cooked into an acceptable dish using salt, pepper, and oil. By 1554, the tomato had achieved its own culinary identity. It was now referred to as pomi d’oro or ‘golden apple.’
However, the tomato’s role in cooking was by no means universally accepted across Italy. Most people only grew tomatoes “ for their beauty” according to the Florentine aristocrat Giovanvettorio Soderini, who describes how they became features in flower gardens. In Northern Europe, this was a conclusion the British quickly came to agree with as they rejected the tomato as a food source after some particularly unfortunate incidents amongst the elite.
The British were prepared to try the new fruit. However, unlike in Italy, the tomato was served uncooked and sliced, presented on pewter plates. However, many observed that people were falling ill after consuming the novelty fruit. They concluded that this was because the likes of Gerard were right; the tomato was indeed poisonous. So, in Britain at least, it came to be regarded not so much as a golden apple as a “poison apple.”
However, the British knew southern Europeans were eating the tomato without ill effects. So, a neat explanation was formulated to account for this-, based on climatic differences. The tomato was the native of a hot climate. Therefore, it was only natural that made it more suitable for eating in hot countries. According to John Parkinson, King James I of England’s apothecary, southern Europeans suffered no ill effects from tomato eating because the fruit ‘coole and quench the heate and thirst of the hot stomaches,”
However, what no one then realized was it was not the tomato, or eating it in the wrong climate that was making northern Europeans ill but rather the plates they were using. For the tomato’s acid juices leeched into the serving dishes and reacting with the lead that formed the pewter. People were not suffering from tomato poisoning; they were suffering from lead poisoning.
However, the British did not discard the tomato. For, like the Italian’s they recognized the merits of the plant’s appearance and its exotic origins. So they began to grow them as garden ornaments instead. Colonists to North American carried this fashion- and the tomato’s terrible reputation, onto Britains new colonies where they remained firmly entrenched until the nineteenth century.
Today, the tomato is one of the most popular staples in America and Europe. So what changed?