THE HISTORY OF TOMATOES IN COOKING

As cooks, we have not done right by the tomato.

For a hundred-plus years after the conquistador Hernán Cortés introduced the tomato to Europe in 1524, Spaniards, the French, and even Italians, looked askance at it as something to cook and eat. For all that time, these Europeans treated it as an ornamental and decorative plant only, grown indoors for the most part, for its comely fruit and the aroma of its feathery leaves.

Despite having been consumed for millennia in its birthplace along coastal Peru and in the large expanse that we call Mesoamerica, where it flourished for 700 years before the Spanish, Europeans had identified the tomato as a member of the Solanaceae family, the so-called “nightshade family.”

Nightshade, and its sibling in the Solanaceae, mandrake, are poisonous. But their mere presence as a relative to the tomato poisoned acceptance of it by humans as food. (Others of the 3,000-strong Solanaceae family include the potato, which had its own introductory hesitancies in Europe, the eggplant, a raft of chile and sweet peppers, gooseberries, even tobacco.)

Other barriers to entry by the tomato into the kitchens of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries were the prevailing attitude that “foreign food” was inferior to what was already available, in addition to an overall distaste for vegetables in the first place.

In the Europe of the 1500s and 1600s, the poor ate vegetables, of course, for they raised them (especially cabbage and root vegetables such as the onion), but the landed and courtly eschewed vegetables because vegetables had low status as food. Vegetables grew in and out of the ground and were thereby “inferior” as foods to those obtainable and preferable from above-ground bushes and trees, or caught from streams or snared during the hunt or from flight.

Tomato vines not only grew out of the ground but also crawled indiscriminately along it and, hence, were doubly cursed as “low life.” Plus, when green, the tomato was overly acidic; when fully ripe, appeared near to be spoiled; and even if then cooked, disintegrated.

These same prejudices carried themselves into the New World as Europeans established their colonies in North America. Not until the mid-1800s did North Americans readily accept the tomato as food.

It wasn’t until the late 1600s, in the Spanish-held southern Italian peninsula of the Kingdom of Naples, that the tomato began appearing in cookbooks and then on the tables of Europe. (Notably in the cooking of Antonio Latini who, in the year of his death, 1692, published a recipe for a tomato sauce, not unlike modern-day ketchup, that could accompany “meats boiled.”)

And what have we cooks done with the tomato since Latini? Well, we prize it as a food, to be sure. Sixteen percent of all global vegetable cultivation is the tomato, second only to the potato. (Biologically, the tomato is not a vegetable, but a fruit, technically a berry, though of course we treat, cook, and eat it as a vegetable.)

But we prize the tomato in a certain way: as shippable, of uniform color and unblemished appearance, and with a long shelf life and staying power, especially freshly eaten.

Hence the ascendancy of tomato F1 hybrids. Also known as “Filial 1 hybrids,” F1s are the first generation of offspring of two different parental types, bred for “improvements” over their parents. Since the 1930s (ramped up in the 1960s and ‘70s), and largely in this country, we have hybridized tomatoes specifically for those attributes that we prize.

Not, by and large, for flavor.

Seed catalogs, growers, and grocers tout the tomato’s yield in the field, its appearance, and its shelf life, referring to taste not at all or as a postscript. (There isn’t much taste to which to refer because by and large there isn’t any.) And especially at the grocery, “ripe” is a synonym—a euphemism, really—merely for “red.”

Worldwide, what tomatoes we generally have at market—fresh or canned—are F1s, not what are known as “heirloom” tomatoes, these being a difficult-to-sell tomato precisely because they are not uniform in color or appearance and are close to impossible to ship.

Yes, heirlooms have flavor—gobs of it—and that is their true prize, that electric balance on the tongue between acidity (tartness) and sweetness, itself whispered to our noses in a heady perfume.

Furthermore, we treat even treated (that is, canned or “put up”) F1 hybrid tomatoes so that some of those same sought-after and inbred attributes, notably sturdiness and redness, remain in the tomato.

For example, every single brand of diced tomato canned in this country that I could find—14 in all, store brand, organic, mass market—contains the chemical calcium chloride, a firming agent added to shore up the tomato’s cell walls so that they do not break down in cooking. (Although breaking down is precisely what a cook might want when, say, making a tomato sauce for a pizza.)

On the other hand, none of the brands that I examined that had been canned, packed, or jarred in Italy—Mutti, Pomì, Cento, DeLallo, or Masseria Mirogallo—contained any calcium chloride at all. What do the Italians know about canned diced tomatoes that we Americans do not? That diced tomatoes are not Legos.

In the main, the calcium chloride story is the same for American versus Italian canned whole peeled tomatoes, too.

Which is why, in the absence of homegrown heirloom tomatoes, I cook with only canned tomatoes from Italy.

Or do not cook with tomatoes at all.

RECIPE: Colorado Catch Striped Hybrid Bass with Tomatoes on Toast
Adapted by Bill St. John from “Fish” (Phaidon Press, 2012). Serves 2-3.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 slices crusty, hearty-crumbed white or “country” bread, 1/2-inch thick
1 18-20 ounce whole Colorado Catch Striped Hybrid Bass, dressed, or equivalent weight in filets, skin on, or other like fish (see note)
14-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, canned in Italy, if possible, roughly chopped, more to taste
1 small garlic clove, peeled and minced
2 medium shallots, peeled and minced
1-2 small ribs celery, from center of bunch only, leaves and ribs chopped very fine
1/4 cup apple juice (or fish broth)
Kosher or sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Directions
Heat the oven to 400 degrees. In a small bowl, mix together the garlic, onions and celery. With some of the olive oil, brush a ceramic ovenproof or gratin dish large enough to hold all the ingredients. Place the bread slices in the dish, overlapping if necessary for them all to fit. Lay the fish atop the bread, skin side up.

Sprinkle the garlic, shallot, and celery mixture evenly over the fish, then the chopped tomatoes, again as evenly as possible. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle with the remaining olive oil. Pour the apple juice (or fish broth) around the perimeter of the dish, circling both the bread and the fish.

Bake the fish for 30 minutes or until slightly firm to the touch. Remove and let rest for 5 minutes, then serve, passing around both bread and fish to each plate.

Note: Colorado Catch Striped Hybrid Bass is available from some Colorado fishmongers, but the recipe can substitute an equal measure of firm-fleshed fish such as whole red snapper, or large filets of cod, tilefish, grouper, or halibut.