How the Tomato Crossed the Atlantic and Won Over Italy

It is hard to imagine Italian food without tomatoes, yet the tomato is a newcomer to Europe. The plant comes from the Americas, where it was grown in Mesoamerica and the Andes long before Europeans arrived. The word “tomato” is usually traced to the Nahuatl word tomatl.

Spanish explorers brought tomato seeds to Europe in the sixteenth century. At first the plant was treated with caution. It belongs to the nightshade family, which includes some poisonous plants, and many Europeans grew it as an ornamental. An Italian herbalist, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, described it in the 1540s and is often quoted as calling it a “golden apple”, suggesting early tomatoes in Italy may have been yellow.

Cooking with tomatoes came slowly. One of the earliest known Italian recipes for a tomato sauce appears in a cookbook by Antonio Latini, published in Naples in the 1690s. Over the following centuries, tomatoes became cheap and widely grown in southern Italy, where the sun and volcanic soil around Naples suit them well.

By the nineteenth century, tomato sauce on pasta and on flatbreads was a common street and home food in Naples. When Italians emigrated in large numbers to the Americas and elsewhere, they took their tomato dishes with them, and the tomato came full circle.

Today Italy is known for many tomato varieties, such as San Marzano and cherry types, and for sauces, pastes and canned tomatoes. The story of the tomato is a reminder that many “traditional” foods are newer than we think, and that great cuisines are often built on borrowed ingredients.

The story in more depth

Long after the tomato settled in Italy, it spread across the rest of the world in different forms. In Spain, where the first seeds arrived, the town of Buñol in Valencia holds La Tomatina every August, a giant street tomato fight that is said to have begun in 1945. In North America, the tomato was slow to win trust, but by the nineteenth century canned tomatoes and sauces were common, and Thomas Jefferson is known to have grown tomatoes at Monticello.

Italy developed its own vocabulary of tomatoes: the long, thick-fleshed San Marzano type, grown on the volcanic slopes near Mount Vesuvius, the sweet cherry tomato of Pachino in Sicily, and the dried and sun-ripened tomatoes of the south. Preserving the summer harvest as passata, paste and whole peeled tomatoes made it possible to cook with tomatoes all year, and families in southern Italy still gather in late summer to make bottles of passata.

Tomatoes also traveled east. In Turkey, salça (tomato and pepper paste) is the base of countless dishes, and in India, tomatoes became central to curries and chutneys only in the last few centuries. Today the tomato is one of the most widely grown vegetables, or technically fruits, on earth, and China is the world’s largest producer.

A timeline

• Thousands of years ago: Wild tomato relatives grow in the Andes, and early farmers in Mesoamerica domesticate larger fruits.
• Early 1500s: After the Spanish reach Mexico, tomato seeds are carried to Spain and then to the rest of Europe.
• 1544: The Italian botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli writes about the tomato as a “golden apple”.
• 1690s: Antonio Latini’s cookbook, published in Naples, includes a tomato sauce in the Spanish style.
• 1800s: Tomato sauce becomes common on pasta and flatbreads in Naples, and canning begins to spread.
• 1876: The American company Heinz sells bottled tomato ketchup, later a global brand.
• 1945: La Tomatina is said to begin in Buñol, Spain.
• Today: China is the world’s largest tomato producer, and tomatoes are among the most grown vegetable crops.

Regional styles and variations

• San Marzano: a long, thin-skinned plum tomato from the Campania region, prized for sauces and with a protected status when grown in a defined area.
• Pomodorino di Pachino: a small, sweet cherry tomato from Sicily with a protected geographical indication.
• Beefsteak and heirloom: large, juicy tomatoes in many colors, best eaten fresh in salads and sandwiches.
• Roma and plum tomatoes: meaty varieties with fewer seeds, used for canning and sauces.
• Pan con tomate: a Catalan breakfast of toasted bread rubbed with ripe tomato, garlic and olive oil.
• Salça: Turkish tomato and pepper paste, a base of many stews.

Buying, tasting and choosing well

For fresh eating, choose tomatoes that are heavy for their size, fragrant at the stem and ripened on the vine, and keep them at room temperature, since cold dulls flavor. For sauces, good canned whole peeled tomatoes are often better than out-of-season fresh ones. Look for short ingredient lists, and for labels such as the San Marzano protected designation if you want that specific type. A pinch of sugar or a little grated carrot can balance very acidic tomatoes.

Did you know?

• Botanically, a tomato is a berry, but in 1893 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Nix v. Hedden that it counts as a vegetable for tariff purposes.
• The red color comes largely from lycopene, a pigment that becomes easier for the body to absorb when tomatoes are cooked.
• Tomato leaves and stems contain a compound called tomatine and are not eaten.
• Tomatoes are one of the most common crops in home gardens around the world.

Eating it today

Tomatoes appear in nearly every kitchen, from a simple summer salad dressed with olive oil to slow-cooked ragù, curries, shakshuka and gazpacho. The best advice from cooks is to respect the season: eat fresh tomatoes at their peak in summer, and rely on good preserved ones the rest of the year.

Countries connected to this story

• Mexico and the Andes: where tomatoes were first cultivated by Indigenous peoples and where the word “tomatl” comes from.
• Spain: the first European country to grow tomatoes in the sixteenth century, and home to La Tomatina in Buñol.
• Italy: the country most identified with tomato cooking, from Neapolitan pizza to San Marzano sauces.
• China: today the largest producer of tomatoes in the world, including for processing into paste.
• Turkey: a major producer; salça paste is a staple of its cooking.
• United States: a large producer, and the home of ketchup as a mass-market condiment.

Where to try it

• Pizzeria Da Michele (Naples, Italy): a famous pizzeria known for serving mainly marinara and margherita pizzas.
• Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba (Naples, Italy): often described as one of the oldest pizzerias in the city, near the Port’Alba gate.
• Pizzeria Gino e Toto Sorbillo (Naples, Italy): a well-known pizzeria on Via dei Tribunali.
• La Tomatina festival (Buñol, Spain): the yearly tomato-throwing festival held on the last Wednesday of August.

These are well-known examples, not paid recommendations or rankings, and places change. Check opening times and details before you travel.

Well-known brands

• Mutti: a well-known Italian maker of passata, polpa and tomato paste, based in the Parma area.
• Cirio: a historic Italian tomato brand known for canned tomatoes.
• Heinz: the American company famous for tomato ketchup, founded in the nineteenth century.
• San Marzano dell’Agro Sarnese-Nocerino PDO: a protected designation for San Marzano tomatoes grown in a defined area of Campania, sold under various brand names.

Brands are named as widely known examples of makers, not as endorsements.

Many food origins are disputed. This story summarizes commonly cited accounts as an introduction, not the final word.