In the late 1700s, a large percentage of Europeans feared the tomato.
The nickname for the fruit was the "poison apple', because it was believed that aristocrats got sick and died after eating them, but the truth of the matter was that wealthy Europeans used pewter dishes, which had a high lead content. Because tomatoes are so highly acidic, when placed on this particular tableware, the fruit would leach lead from the plate, resulting in many deaths from lead poisoning. No one made this connection between plate and poison at the time. The tomato was chosen as the culprit.
Around 1880, with the invention of pizza in Naples, the tomato became widespread in Europe. But there's a bit more to the story behind the misunderstood fruit's period of unpopularity in England and America, as Andrew F. Smith reports in The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture, and Cookery. The tomato wasn't just blamed for what was really lead poisoning. Before the fruit reached the table in North America, it was classified as deadly nightshade, a poisonous family Solanaceae plants which contains toxins called tropane alkaloids.
One of the first known European references to the food was made by the Italian botanist, Pietro Andrae Matthioli , who first classified the "golden apple" as an evening primrose and as a mandrake— a class of food known as an aphrodisiac. The mandrake has a history dating back to the Old Testament. It is mentioned twice as the Hebrew word dudaim, which roughly translates to "I love the apple". (In Genesis, the mandrake is used as a love potion). Matthioli's classification of the tomato as a mandrake had later ramifications. Like its similar fruits and vegetables family of solanaceae – eggplant for example, the tomato has acquired a shadowy reputation for being both poisonous and a source of temptation. (Editor's Note: This sentence has been amended to clarify that it was the mandrake, not the tomato, that is believed to be referred to in the Old Testament)
But what the tomato really did, according to Smith's research, was publish it Herbal by John Gerard in 1597, which was largely drawn from the agricultural labors of Dodoens and l'Ecluse (1553). According to Smith, most of the information (which was inaccurate at first) was plagiarized by Gerard, a barber-surgeon who misspelled words such as Lycoperticum to the rushed final product of the collection. Smith quotes Gerard:
Gerard considered "the whole plant" to be "fragrant and foul-smelling." While the leaves and stem of the tomato are toxic, the fruit is not.
Gerard's opinion of the tomato, although based on a fallacy, prevailed in Britain and the British North American colonies for more than 200 years.
At the time it was also believed that tomatoes were best eaten in warmer countries, such as the fruit's place of origin in Mesoamerica. The tomato was consumed by the Aztecs as early as 700 AD. and was called 'tomatl', (its Nahuatl name), and was not cultivated in Britain until the 1590s. In the early 16th century, Spanish conquistadors returning from expeditions to Mexico and other parts of Mesoamerica are believed to have first introduced carries the seeds to southern Europe. Some researchers credit Cortez with bringing the seeds to Europe in 1519 for ornamental purposes. Until the late 1800s in colder climates, tomatoes were grown solely for ornamental purposes in gardens and not for consumption. Smith continues:
John Parkinson, apothecary to King James I and botanist to King Charles I, said that while love apples were eaten by people in hot countries to "cool and quench the heat and thirst of hot stomachs", British gardeners they cultivated only for curiosity and for the beauty of the fruit.
The first known reference to the tomato in the British North American colonies was published in botanist William Salmon's Botanologia printed in 1710, which places the tomato in the Carolinas. The tomato became an accepted edible fruit in many areas, but the United States of America was not so united in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Word of the tomato spread slowly along with many myths and questions from the farmers. Many knew how to grow them, but not how to cook the food.
By 1822, hundreds of tomato recipes appeared in local magazines and newspapers, but fears and rumors about the plant's potential poison remained. By the 1830s, when the love apple was cultivated in New York, a new concern arose. The Green Tomato Worm, three to four inches long with a horn protruding from its back, has begun to take over tomato patches across the state. According the Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs and Cultivator Almanac (1867) edited by JJ Thomas, it was believed that mere contact with such a worm could result in death. The description is chilling:
The tomato in all our gardens is infested with a very large fat green worm, with slanting white sterols along its sides and a curved thorn-like horn at the end of its back.
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Source: smithsonianmag