WEBVTT - Tomato, Tomato, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.800 Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:19.000 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:21.040 I was going to start off today by saying that, 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:23.680 of course it's the most wonderful time of the year, 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:26.759 but I think I'm actually already on record saying October 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:29.040 is the most wonderful time of the year. And of 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:31.760 course October is because that's you know, monster madness, but 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:36.159 monster season aside, I think tomato season is the second 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:38.600 most wonderful time of the year, and we're right in 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:42.680 it now. Tomato season is pretty wonderful. Um. We're we're 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.440 big tomato fans here in the house. Given the confines 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:49.920 of imposed by the pandemic, we're actually growing more tomatoes 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:53.279 at the house than ever before. Um, and yeah, it's 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:57.200 been fabulous. We're big fans of panzanella, which is a 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:00.720 I think a Tuscan chopped salad or originally but it's 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:05.040 like soaked or soaked stale or toasted bread. We throw 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:08.039 in basil and then of course the tomatoes. Uh. Similarly, 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:11.760 we really love a good caprice salad because yeah, a 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:15.640 great tomato just elevates anything. In my opinion. You know, 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:17.640 you can do a great tomato. All you need is 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:19.520 just a little salt and pepper, maybe a drizzle of 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:22.200 olive oil, and you're good to go. A great tomato 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:24.760 is I think, in the same class where people think 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:27.360 of like a great steak. It is just like a 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:31.800 complete food in itself that is so good, you know, 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:34.240 it kind of makes people moan when they eat it. 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:37.520 And I definitely grew up thinking that I did not 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:40.240 like tomatoes. I thought I hated tomatoes. I'd always pick 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:42.640 them off of a sandwich if if they were on there. 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:45.200 But I realized later in life the issue was just 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:48.720 that I hated bad tomatoes. And almost every tomato you 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:50.840 get in a you know, in a subway or what. 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:52.360 I don't mean to single them out, but you know, 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:55.000 any sandwich shop, whatever, it's almost never going to be 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:58.120 a good one. It's going to be kind of a white, mealy, tough, 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:02.000 flavorless thing that doesn't have all of the beautiful aromatic 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:06.800 tomato ee compounds, that doesn't have that perfect juicy texture, 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:10.840 A ripe, home grown or or you know, farmer's market 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:14.480 summer tomato that has never been refrigerated, never had to 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:16.960 be shipped on a big truck any of that stuff. 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:19.639 It is a thing of beauty. And if you've never 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:22.320 experienced a tomato that way, you don't know what you're 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:25.200 missing yet. Yeah, absolutely, you just you're not going to 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:28.600 get the same thing with a grocery store tomato generally, 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:31.720 unless you know they are actually servants selling like local 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:35.280 airlimb tomatoes. I'm a big fan of box meal kits. 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:37.560 I'm a subscriber to one of them right now. But 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:40.399 you're just not gonna You're not gonna get a wonderful 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.160 tomato through the mail like that. It's gotta it's got 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:44.560 to come from your own garden. It's got to come 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:47.760 from a local um garden. It and when you get 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:50.400 to dig into it, it is like nothing else. It's 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:56.239 just miles above uh, the sort of mundane canned tomato 0:02:56.400 --> 0:03:01.080 grocery store tomato experience. Yeah. And I think one reason is, uh, 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:05.360 just the sheer mechanics of like shipping products. Right, have 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:08.160 you ever had a really good ripe summer tomato As 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.320 soon as you handle it, you know, like this would 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:14.320 not survive the like the rough process of getting from 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:17.000 a farm to the grocery store to my house. It's 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:20.440 a delicate baby bird. It's the thing that that you know, 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:23.960 it's it's barely going to survive the trip from the 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:28.360 vine to your kitchen counter. Oh yeah, and again speaking 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:31.359 is a very amateur tomato grower here. But the ones 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:33.800 we bring in from the backyard, like they we have 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:36.120 to like knock the bugs off of them. They're already 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.040 oozing a little bit. Yeah, this is a very delicate 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.720 balance between the plate and the compost heap. You've got 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:46.000 to get there just the right time. But on the 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:48.640 other hand, I'm also actually I'm a pretty big fan 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:52.200 of canned tomatoes for cooked applications. If if it's a tomato, 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:54.880 you know, if you're making tomato sauce or something like that, 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.760 a decent can of of whole peeled tomatoes that you 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:02.120 puree yourself from ash to whatever consistency you want works 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:04.000 just fine. I mean, you know that they're picked when 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:06.360 they're ideal, and you know they go ahead and can them. 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:08.920 It's much better than trying to make a say, a 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:13.720 tomato sauce from tomatoes that are fresh in the off season. Yeah. Yeah, 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:15.680 it it ultimately depends, like what is the role of 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:18.680 the tomato in the dish is is this a starring 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.080 vehicle for a fresh tomato. If so, nothing but a 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:24.680 really good fresh tomato is going to work. But if 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:27.560 it's something where the tomato is more of a supporting player, 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:31.360 then perhaps one of these other things will work. And then, 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.039 of course there's not just one tomato. Obviously, there's so 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:37.839 many different types. For my own purposes, I find that 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:41.760 when it's not tomato season, those little like grape tomatoes 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:43.240 are pretty good if you have to get some of 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:47.160 the store. Absolutely, I'm a hundred percent in agreement, cherry tomatoes, 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:49.720 grape tomatoes are the much better option if you need 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:52.920 fresh tomatoes in the off season. So listeners, as you 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:55.760 can probably tell, we're going to be talking about tomatoes 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:59.200 not for one episode, but for two whole episodes. And 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:02.440 if you're thinking, well, the tomato is just so mundane, 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:04.680 it's so every day, this is gonna be a you know, 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:09.400 two episodes of of backyard um um like hoakery here 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:11.880 that I can just skip on stuff to blow your mind. 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:15.000 Nothing could be further from the truth, because there is 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:19.760 so much weirdness in these episodes. There's quackery, there's myth making, 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:24.560 they're tall tails, and there's all space colonizations, yes, space colonization. 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:28.560 It's going to cover really like a broad area of 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:31.159 stuff to blow your mind content, even though at the 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:34.920 center of it is this fruit that has become just 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:38.039 such a staple of most of our diets in one 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.240 form or another. So maybe we should start off just 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:44.719 by looking at the tomato plant as an organism. What 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.360 what is this organism and how did we end up 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:50.600 with the modern cultivated tomato. Yeah, this is a great, 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:53.200 great place to start, because this is another one of 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:56.480 those stories where if you don't think about it too close, 0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:58.560 if you don't research it yourself, you just might think, oh, well, 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:02.919 tomatoes have always been everywhere, they have always been a 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:05.800 part of our diet because they're just so ubiquitous now. 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:08.800 But this is not the case. Okay, So, first of all, 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:11.880 you've probably just heard us say the word fruit. This 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:13.919 is one of those facts I think most people know 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:16.200 at this point. You probably learned this before. But in 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:20.359 biological terms, a tomato is a fruit rather than a vegetable, 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:22.640 and part of this comes down to the different ways 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.159 that we use the term fruits and vegetables in a 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:28.960 sort of culinary or nutritional sense versus in a botanical sense. 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.359 Um like we in a culinary or nutritional sense, we 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:36.479 intuitively sort things into categories of fruits and vegetables, I think, 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:41.080 largely based on sugar content and whether they're primarily used 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:45.159 in sweet or savory preparations, So plants that are savory 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.960 or vegetables plants that are sweet or fruits. However, even 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.480 this is somewhat arbitrary as a cultural convention, because there 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:56.080 are ways in which these these types of groupings can 0:06:56.200 --> 0:06:59.880 vary widely from culture to culture. One example is avocad 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.920 oos our avocados a sweet food or a savory food. 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:07.200 I think for me and for most Americans, the answer 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:10.200 overwhelmingly would be its savory food. They go in guacamole, 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:12.560 you pair them with lime and salt, you put them 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:15.120 on toast, you put them in a burrito. But for 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:19.120 millions of people in like South America and Asia, avocados 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.840 are primarily a sweet food, used more often in dessert dishes, 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.400 which seems very strange to us. But I don't know. 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:27.160 If you think of it as kind of basically just 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:31.600 a buttery substance, it starts to click in place. Yeah, yeah, 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.840 I agree. I always grew up thinking of it certainly 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:37.080 something you add a little salt and pepper two against 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:39.320 some olive oil two and you have a great dish. 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:43.120 But we're big fans of going to local like bubble 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.560 tea places, uh and Asian dessert places, and you will 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:49.520 find like avocado smoothies as a as a you know, 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:52.480 a standard item you encounter on menus and I've tried 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:54.880 it before. It's it's delicious, But yeah, you wouldn't you 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:57.880 wouldn't necessarily think about it from a Western perspective of 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:02.280 being the dessert item. But either way, these culinary distinctions 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:05.520 often just don't have a biological basis. In fact, other 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:08.560 culinary vegetables things we think of as vegetables in a 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:14.840 cooking sense, are biologically fruits. Cucumbers, chili, peppers, eggplants, all fruits. 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:18.360 But to go even better, the tomato is not only fruit, 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:22.720 it is technically a berry and one thing that I 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.160 think you could probably even into it just looking at say, 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:28.600 you know, if you're growing a variety of heirloom tomato 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:32.840 in your backyard and you see this monstrous fruit hanging 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:35.120 off of a vine that you have to prop up 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.319 on a steak or a cage or otherwise, this gigantic 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:41.480 fruit is just gonna make it drooped down on the ground. Uh. 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:44.079 And it's the you know, it looks like a thing 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:47.400 that should not be in a way. Um. So you 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:49.920 might be able to into it that tomatoes have not 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:53.080 always been this way, like many of the modern fruits 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:56.760 and vegetables we eat, it had to be adapted from 0:08:56.920 --> 0:09:01.080 a naturally occurring fruit or vegetable that did not necessarily 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.840 grow as large in the edible part um. And it 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:09.000 appears that modern cultivated tomatoes, which have the scientific name 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:15.000 Solanum lycopersicum, are descended from a wild berry that grew 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.800 in northwestern South America, maybe around the area of Peru 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:22.679 or a little farther north. And the research tracing these 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:26.720 biological origins has been summarized in a few sources. I 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:30.040 looked at, for example, in the Oxford Companion to Food, 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:33.679 which was edited by Alan Davidson. Uh. They looked at 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:37.760 studies by, for example, Sophie co in N and other 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:41.679 researchers over the years that found that the wild ancestor 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:46.000 of the tomato was very likely. They identify a couple 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:51.559 of species, one Lycopersicon seraciform. And then another one, so 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:57.240 Lantum pimpanellifolium, which is today known as the current tomato. 0:09:57.320 --> 0:10:00.240 Not current as in timely, but current as in the 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:03.160 fruit a current. And it's called this because in a way, 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:08.160 these these wild tomatoes, the Slanum pimpanilla folium, sort of 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:11.440 resemble currents. They're these tiny little berries, almost kind of 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:15.360 current or blueberry sized. Yeah, So some of the examples 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:17.000 I was reading was that if you went back to 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:21.319 pre Columbian Peru, you would encounter, if you knewhere to look, 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:25.520 you would find these wild growing, essentially yellow berries that 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:29.520 were the predecessor, the likely predecessor to the modern tomato. Yes, 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:32.320 now exactly how it went from that wild berry to 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:37.040 the cultivated varieties that people eat that that's still um. 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:40.640 We know some things, but it's still a somewhat open question. 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:42.959 That there have been some genomic studies that I'll talk 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:46.120 about in just a minute, but we know that such 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:50.439 a thing as the cultivated tomato existed by the time 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:54.440 the Spanish arrived in Mesoamerica. By that time, the az 0:10:54.520 --> 0:10:58.080 tech people are the no waddle speaking people, were eating 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.199 tomatoes that they grew as crops, and they were eating 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:05.080 them in dishes, often prepared in conjunction with chili peppers. 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.280 But of course we we know that this wild ancestor 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:11.680 of the tomato, this berry grew in northwest South America. 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:15.360 It was you know, this wild fine and so there's 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:19.320 still a question of how exactly that wild fruit made 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:22.280 its way up north to Meso America in order to 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:25.480 be cultivated as a food crop by the Aztecs. Yeah, 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:28.840 there's already even at this early stage in the history 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:32.000 of of the global tomato. It's kind of a botanical 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:35.360 game of telephone, right. Uh. So I was trying to 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:37.920 look up what is some of the most recent scientific 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:40.920 work on this, and there was a new study about 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:43.800 the domestication history of the tomato that was published just 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:47.439 this year, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:53.959 by Razafard at All. And so what they present is 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:55.680 a little complicated. I'm going to try to do the 0:11:55.720 --> 0:12:00.680 simplest version I can. So the authors say that before research, 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:04.040 our best guess about the domestication history of the tomato 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:06.240 went like this, So you had this wild berry in 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:08.840 South America. It's growing up in the andes up in 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:12.959 the northwest corner of South America, and this is Solanum 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:16.679 pimpanella folium. Here again, this is the one we mentioned earlier. 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:18.360 The fruits are going to be about the size of 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:23.400 a blueberry. Then in this older understanding, this was transformed 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:30.439 into the semi domesticated plant Clanum Lycopersicum saraciform or SLC. 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:34.360 But if you see SLC and tomato literature, don't confuse 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:37.200 that with Salt Lake City. It means this species, and 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:40.680 this would have happened within South America. These fruits would 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:42.559 have been about the size of a cherry, so kind 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:45.480 of similar to cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes that you 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:47.920 could buy at the store today. Obviously somewhat different, but 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:52.080 similar somewhat in in look, in size. And then finally, 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:55.920 this middle species, the s l C, was transformed into 0:12:55.960 --> 0:13:01.480 the larger, fully domesticated clandum Lycopersicum very lycopersicum. And this 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.280 was the Aztec food crop that was developed into the 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:07.840 tomatoes that people eat all around the world today. And uh, 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:10.679 strange fact lyco persicum. I think Robert you might have 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:16.320 a note about this later, but it means literally wolf peach. Yes, um, yeah, 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:18.960 and yeah that it's this is interesting because this was 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:22.840 some sort of a fruit that was described by Galen 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:29.200 who lived two hundred C, which obviously as well before 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:34.120 tomatoes actually came to uh To, uh To to Europe, 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:38.440 so obviously Galen was not describing a tomato. But this 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:41.400 just this description ends up getting wound up in the 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:46.360 classification of tomatoes in the West later on. Yeah, but 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:49.959 so anyway, the authors of this study from US population 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:53.920 genomic methods to try to reconstruct a genomic map of 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:58.480 the modern tomatoes domestication history, and they conclude quote A, 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:03.360 results suggest that the ore gen of SLC may predate domestication, 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:07.760 and that many traits considered typical of cultivated tomatoes arose 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:12.480 in South American SLC, but we're lost or diminished once 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:16.720 these partially domesticated forms spread northward. These traits were then 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:20.880 likely re selected in a convergent fashion in the common 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:24.360 cultivated tomato prior to its expansion around the world. So 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:28.400 a little complicated. Basically, they're saying that the semi domesticated 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:30.680 breed of tomato that may have been used as as 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.960 not not a cultivated crop but a semi domesticated food 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:37.640 by some people in South America. It had some traits 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:41.480 that arose naturally, and then those traits were re selected 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:46.360 and emphasized by growers in meso America before the tomato 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:50.240 finally spread all over the world. Interesting, Now, we've already 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:52.520 touched on the fact that the tomato isn't the only 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:55.040 case of this. There there's a whole thing about what 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:58.680 you call breeds of plants and how to and how 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:02.120 to know whether you talking about the same fruit or plant. 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:04.920 When you're using different names throughout history, it can become 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:08.720 very confusing. Um. But just about the history of the 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:12.520 word tomato itself. The English word tomato, of course comes 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:17.040 via the Spanish tomate, which was adapted from the original 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:20.080 now Wattle word tomadel. Now I've seen a lot of 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:24.240 sources claimed that to model was simply the Noattle word 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:27.200 for the fruit for the tomato. But the entry and 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:29.680 the Oxford companion actually goes a little deeper. And this 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:33.440 is kind of interesting again about linguistic confusion. So apparently 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.640 in the now Wattle language, tom model simply meant plump fruit. 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:41.920 So to indicate the ancestor of our tomato you had 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:45.320 to add the prefix z. So the word was z 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:48.160 to model that was the ancestor of the tomato we 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:52.240 have today, and this distinguished it from the husked ancestor 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:56.760 to modern tomatos, which the as texts called meal to model, 0:15:57.160 --> 0:15:59.800 and then the Spanish ended up using the word tomata 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:04.320 for both tomatillo in Spanish that just means little tomato, 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:07.320 though they are not actually large and small versions of 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.720 the same fruit. They're totally different species but that but 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:13.040 they are related. Um these are all in the nights 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:16.320 shade family, and we'll get into to that. Um into 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:18.680 that in a bit. But the authors of the Oxford 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:21.560 Companion point out this led to a bunch of confusion 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:25.200 for Spanish chroniclers who just didn't always seem to understand 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:28.800 which fruit was being talked about. Uh. THEO and I 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:31.960 have mentioned this before, But they also point out that 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:37.160 in as Tech cuisine, tomatoes were consistently linked with chili peppers, 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:39.560 and I gotta say it's a good combination. Tomatoes and 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:43.320 chili peppers are are two fruits that go well together. Absolutely. 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:47.200 But here once we have contact between the hemispheres, this 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:51.080 opens up the doors of of of spread of this 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:54.160 plant all over the world, and eventually it does spread. 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:56.480 Now I have to say that the way that the 0:16:56.560 --> 0:17:00.920 tomato spreads uh through and around the world is it 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:03.920 both is it was it once alarming, like it's really 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:06.480 it's really a success story. But it's also not one 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:08.879 of these situations where you can say, oh, well, this 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:11.920 individual brought the tomato to Europe and then it was 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:15.280 an enormous success and here we are like, it's not 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:18.840 that simple and uh and and we we certainly encourage 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:21.520 people are interested in this to seek out some of 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:23.240 the books were going to mention here in a bit 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:25.679 because they'll get into a lot more detail about this. 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:27.960 It is um, I guess you would say it is. 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:32.200 There's a lot of touch and go uh, false starts, um. 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:34.760 And as we'll discuss a little bit too, there's some 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:38.919 myth making involved in some some legend regarding just how 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:41.800 the tomato takes off and what is standing in its way. 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:44.280 I would also say that the tomato has a somewhat 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:47.480 complicated and murky uh. If it were a text, we 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:52.280 would call it the reception history. Yeah. Absolutely, So we're 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:54.080 gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.200 we are going to dive into some of the issues 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:02.000 of its spread through Europe. And then paradoxically like back 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:10.280 into North America. Alright, we're back. So, uh, we may 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:12.040 have talked in the past, you and I about doing 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:15.240 a tomato episode, Uh, doing something about the tomatoes. Tomatoes 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:18.560 have definitely come up on the show before, but my 0:18:18.640 --> 0:18:22.119 wife this summer had had specifically mentioned She said, you 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:25.560 guys should do tomato episode. You should do it, you should, 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:27.960 you should really dive in there. And I think something 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:31.440 that helped encourage this is that we encountered a sign 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:34.240 at a botanical garden that was describing tomatoes. Then it 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.760 mentioned that in the past people thought they were poisonous. 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:39.480 So I have to admit that that was like, that 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:41.880 was a real key area of interest for me going 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:45.439 into this episode, getting into you know, just just discussing 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:49.760 whether people ever actually considered the tomato to be poisonous 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:53.359 and what does that mean, because it just seems ridiculous 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:55.280 on the face of it, Right, the tomato has conquered 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.480 the planet. We know the tomato is not poisonous, and 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:00.960 the idea of people being afraid to eat it because 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:05.360 they think it is poisonous, Uh, it just seems completely looney. Well, 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:07.800 and it's funny because even once you investigate it, I 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:12.640 would say that this irony remains, because the irony remains 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:15.840 because we are going to encounter people who are saying 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:19.360 the tomato is poisonous, but they're not saying it at 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:22.960 a time when nobody was eating tomatoes because everybody thought 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:25.480 they were poisonous. They'd be like, well, some people eat them, 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:28.840 but they're poisonous, right, Yeah, you didn't have like single 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:32.880 voices with a global reach saying we do not eat 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:35.280 tomatoes or no one should eat tomatoes, because you have 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:38.560 a lot of um, you know, a lot of division 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.480 based on like who's talking about it, what country they're in, 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:44.760 what you know, what levels of society they're at, etcetera. 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:47.320 And then on top of additional legends that pop up. 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:51.720 But but this basic idea that people specifically, you'll see 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:55.360 like Europeans or Americans used to be afraid to eat 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:58.920 tomatoes because they thought they were poisonous. You see this everywhere. 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:00.960 You see this again it but uncle gardens. You see 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:04.399 this popping up in um news stories about the tomato, 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:06.600 and it is often just presented as just a straight 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:10.760 up fact. Uh. But again, when I started looking into it, 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:13.760 I became increasingly less sure because on one hand, yeah, 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:15.359 it sounds too good to be true, and then you 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:18.919 do encounter these um these are these, these wrinkles in 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:21.879 the description that really um drive home that Okay, not 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:25.640 everybody thought this at the same time. So again we're 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:28.800 not going to cover the entire history of the tomatoes 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:33.800 um influx into Europe and then it's um it's acceptance 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:38.600 by European societies. But the first known European reference to 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:46.680 tomatoes comes in four from Italian herbalist Peito Andre Matthioli, 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:51.040 and he wrote of the mala aria the golden apples 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:55.200 we she described as ripening from green to yellow. Now 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:58.480 he classified the tomato with the man drake, which was 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:01.760 of course part of this big night shade family. And 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:04.600 this is, of course this is accurate. I mean they 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:07.080 are in this family. We consider the tomato to be 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:11.159 a night shade, along with things like the eggplant. Um. 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:13.879 But this is often held up is one aspect of 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:18.679 the poisonous reputation that tomatoes gathered in European society, with 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:22.240 botanists signifying that they were a part of this family 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:26.760 that contained things um uh like deadly nightshade or like 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:29.320 like the man drake. Root, which of course has all 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:33.720 these connotations with various medicinal and sort of magical practices, 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:35.879 but at the same time, at the only discussed how 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:38.840 tomatoes were cooked and eaten at the time much in 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:42.200 the same way as eggplants, which were another imported food, 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:46.639 only this this eggplants came from Asia um And and 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:49.240 they were again part of the night shade family. And 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:51.359 this has to be this seems to be a major 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:56.359 sticking point for a large portion of of the tomatoes 0:21:56.400 --> 0:22:00.320 European tradition uh with it and the related egg plant 0:22:00.400 --> 0:22:03.679 not traveling all that well into New European cuisines, or 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:07.080 not all of them anyway, because of their association with 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:10.320 man brakes and poisons as well as I would imagine 0:22:10.320 --> 0:22:13.239 just sort of a a general hesitation to take up 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:18.280 new plants into a into a pre existing culinary tradition. 0:22:18.640 --> 0:22:21.000 One one really interesting example of this UHM. I was 0:22:21.040 --> 0:22:26.879 reading about UH regards the seventeenth century German garden. I 0:22:26.960 --> 0:22:30.359 was reading when the tomato was purely ornamental considering New 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:34.000 World foods in seventeenth century Berlin. And this was by 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:39.160 Millie Taylor Pulaski, published in Transatlantic Trade and Global Cultural 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:43.879 transfer since fourteen. This was published in twenty nineteen. So 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:48.359 the author mentions that tomatoes were purely ornamental summer plants 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:51.640 in most Berlin gardens in sixteen fifty six, and this 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:54.879 was due in large part to a German naturalist by 0:22:54.920 --> 0:23:00.159 the name of Johann uh Sigismund el schotz Um, who 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:03.240