FoodA Very Short Introduction

Global trade and cuisine: tomatoes in Italy

Cuisine has clearly changed in many parts of the world as a result of trade. The explorers who made contact with the New World brought tomatoes, potatoes, maize, quinoa, and avocados, as well as herbs such as coriander, back to Europe. Nowadays we associate chilli peppers and coriander with Asian cuisine, but in all probability these ingredients only arrived in Asia with the Portuguese explorers, who had encountered them in Latin America, in the 16th century. Before the arrival of the chilli, Asian cuisine used black or white pepper as a pungent spice. Chilli took over because it had a similar effect and was much easier to grow and therefore cheaper. The same is true of the other food plants that have been adopted outside their native country: if they were easy to grow, nutritious, or otherwise useful in cooking, they were often rapidly taken up.

However, the tomato in Italy is a remarkable counter example. Nowadays, Italian cuisine is often associated with the tomato: pasta al pomodoro, pizza Margherita, chicken cacciatore, and ragu alla Bolognese are just a few of the very familiar Italian dishes that include tomatoes. In the 1950s English cookery writer Elizabeth David criticized Italian cooking for containing too much tomato. But, remarkably, this is a tradition that dates back only as far as the 19th century. As the historian David Gentilcore has documented, there was a delay of more than 300 years between the arrival of the tomato in Italy in 1548, from the New World, via Spain, and its widespread use in cooking. The Italians adopted other New World crops such as maize, beans, chillis, and tobacco, before they accepted tomatoes.

Gentilcore suggests a number of possible reasons for this. The early tomatoes were sour because sweetness had not yet been bred into them. They were identified by botanists as belonging to the Solanaceae, the same family of plants as deadly nightshade (along with aubergines, potatoes, and tobacco) and were therefore treated with suspicion. One authority described them as ‘dangerous and harmful’ and their smell alone was said to cause ‘eye diseases and headaches’. Tomatoes were nevertheless grown as ornamental plants. The Italian name pomo d’oro (yellow fruit), as opposed to the Aztec ‘tomatl’, may have been adopted as an allusion to the tree that bears golden apples in Greek mythology.

The tomato’s acceptance as a food was gradual: in the mid 17th century there are references to its use as a condiment, to make a salsa with chilli peppers, and by the late 18th century recipes in cookery books were appearing. Methods of preserving tomatoes for use in the winter were also being developed. These included drying halved tomatoes (equivalent to modern sun-dried tomatoes) and making a paste from boiled tomato purée that was then dried in sheets in the sun. But dishes such as pasta with tomato sauce and pizza Margherita were probably 19th-century inventions, the latter formally named after the queen of Italy in 1889. The crucial development of canned tomatoes and tomato purée took place in Britain and the USA: in fact, the emigrant Italians influenced the development of tomato-based cuisine in the USA and the breeding of new varieties, which were later reimported into Italy.

In this chapter we have seen how our food preferences are affected by many influences, including our sensory receptors and brain, our genetic make-up, our infant and childhood exposure, as well as our social and cultural environment. As omnivores we have evolved to be both cautious about the potential risks associated with unfamiliar foods and flexible enough to embrace new food experiences. Food for us humans is more than fuel. It is part of our culture, our social life, our religions, and our pleasure.