Garden Ornament | Love Apples
One of the pleasures of late summer is picking and eating ripe, red tomatoes. The tomato is a relative newcomer to Plymouth cuisine, however.
While a Native American plant, the tomato (called xitomatl, in the Aztec language), did not traditionally grow this far north. The Wampanoag had lots of squash and melons to harvest at the end of summer, but no tomatoes.
Europeans first encountered tomatoes in Mexico, and the Spanish introduced them to Europe in the 1500s. The tomato was known as “pomo d’oro,” or “golden apple” in Italian, which became “pomme d’amour,” or “love apple,” in French. While the plant caught on in Italy and Spain, people in the north were suspicious, as it resembled poisonous deadly nightshade.
John Gerard (1545-1612), an English botanist, wrote about tomatoes, which he called “apples of love,” in his Herball. While he recognized that people ate tomatoes “in hot Countries,” he stated that, “they yeeld very little nourishment to the body, and the same naught and corrupt” (Gerard’s Herball, 1636).
This is one food that was NOT eaten at the First Thanksgiving.
Gradually the tomato came back across the ocean to British North America. Thomas Jefferson brought tomato seeds back with him from France in the late 1700s and introduced them in Virginia.
The first person to bring tomatoes to Plymouth was Dr. James Thacher (1754-1844). Originally from Barnstable, Thacher settled in Plymouth after serving during the Revolution as a surgeon with the Continental Army. Thacher was also a historian, naturalist and prolific writer, whose works range from a journal of his experiences during the Revolution to his History of the Town of Plymouth
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