August 11, 2017 • 33 mins
Once considered deadly, the tomato has a fascinating history as a tax evader, protest device, and potential hallucinogen! GASP. There's also a lot of great science and nicknames involved in the tomato's story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Annie Reeve and
I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we're talking about the tomatoes,
the tomato of catchup soup. Fame's fame, sure, And while
it might be incredibly popular in a whole range of
products today, it used to be quite feared. Yeah, people
were terrified of the tomato. And it's gone through a
(00:31):
lot of names over its history. The poisonous apple, love apple,
the wolf peach, wolf peach, I love it, tax evader, pimp.
No really used to go by that. It almost makes
you want to call the whole thing off. But never fear.
(00:51):
We don't call things off here at food Stuff. Also,
don't throw tomatoes at us for that or any future
terrible jokes. Please. The potato tomato thing is going to
come back, so sorry about it. So so let's let's
kick this off, as we generally do, by talking about
what is it? Well, what is it? Laan, It's delicious,
it is. The tomato is a fruit that grows on
(01:12):
tenderish stems that can be either bushy or vine like.
And yes, according to scientific taxonomy, it is a fruit.
It grows from the ovary of a flower and it
contains seeds fruit. Um, it's actually a berry technically, but
according to the law that can be a different story.
More on that later. The word comes from the as
(01:33):
te tama til which we mentioned in our Bloody Marry episode,
and that's said to come from the root to swell
or to plump, meaning something like a like the swelling
fruit makes sense sure, And the English spelling of tomato
is thought to have been influenced by the word potato,
which originated a bit earlier, but around the same time. Okay,
there you go. They are a perennial plant, which means
(01:54):
for all those gardeners out there, that they will live
more than one year if you protect them from winter frosts.
But they're usually grown as an annual do to winter frosts,
that is, for a single season, and then replaced with
new seeds or new plants. The bushy varieties are usually
what's called determinate tomatoes, which which fruit all at once
uh during during their growing season over the course of
(02:15):
just a couple of weeks, So all of a sudden,
you go from zero to all all the effing tomatoes. Yeah.
The viney ones, meanwhile, are usually indeterminate tomatoes. Which means
that they'll bloom and fruit like individual clusters of tomatoes
over the course of of a longer season. I've always
wanted to grow tomatoes, but I've been told that that
is a tricky one to start with. Yeah, and I
(02:36):
have a bad track record those plants. Yeah, we both
kind of have black thumbs or not. I don't know.
Minds like greenish black, Okay, yeah, yeah, okay, Well you've
had some success, there's potential for success for you. Yeah. Yeah,
mind's like Wicked, which of the West colors? Yeah, that's okay. Yeah.
(02:57):
Throughout throughout history, um, most tomatoes that people ate were
what we now call heirloom tomatoes, meaning that they fruit
via open pollination and their seeds generally produce about the
same fruit as their parents. Lots of the tomatoes were
having grocery stores today, though, are known as hybrid tomatoes.
That is, they were developed from wild strains and must
(03:17):
be carefully cross pollinated in order to produce standardized fruit
or order fruit at all. Really, because if you if
you plant seeds from them, they're not guaranteed to grow fruit,
let alone of fruit resembling their parent plant. Oh yeah,
Tomatoes in general are hecken popular. They're one of the
largest most lucrative vegetable crops in the world. Heavy scare quotes.
(03:39):
They're they're up there with like potatoes, onions, and lettuce,
which are big ones. Yeah, the global industry was worth
four point two billion dollars as of two thousand three,
and it's generally an industry that sees increases year over year,
so it's probably even bigger now. Yeah, probably, But this
was not always so, no way, not at all. Like
any said earlier, people used to be really scared of them.
(04:01):
And we'll get to that right after. We take a
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you sponsor. So the earliest ancestor of the tomato
most likely originated in South and Central America, where it
(04:23):
descended and evolved from the deadly nightshade plant over millions
of years. It was small and probably more yellow than red,
and the leaves were slightly poisonous, and the small, more
yellow than red version was called the pimp by the way,
still around yes, absolutely, around five b C. The Aztecs
domesticated the tomato and began using it in their cooking,
(04:46):
also sometimes as a hallucinogenic and the seeds as an aphrodisiac. Yeah,
very useful. Um. From there, other South and Central American
civilizations integrated the tomato into their cuisine. Freakness sake. So
you have to talk about Christopher Columbus again again, pops
(05:07):
up all the time. He probably ran across tomatoes in
and maybe possibly took them back to Europe or their
seeds at least. Yeah, we're not positive. Spanish conquisador Hernan
Cortez for sure did, however, and took the seeds he
retreat from the fallen aastic city of Toolan to Europe.
In By the fifteen forties, Spain was producing tomatoes. A
(05:32):
fifteen forty four Nepalese cookbook contained of the first known
written reference to the tomato. Arthur Pietro and Mattioli classified
the tomato as a man drake and a nightshade. This
was not the best thing to be classified as. Italian
nobility used the plan as a table top decoration, believing
the tomato to be poisonous. How Edgy and goth I know, like,
(05:56):
let's let's take this beautiful man drink and put it
on our table. This poisonous thing yeah, just put it
where we eat, I mean, as it turns out. Yeah, yeah,
I know. Ultimately everything was fine. Yes. The English also
believed that the tomato was poisonous after the introduction of
the plant in The word tomato first appeared two years
(06:19):
earlier in but it wasn't the most flattering mentioned. John
Gerard's popular English herbal described the tomato as poisonous and
quote of rank and stinking savor, and in part because
of this, the tomato earned the nickname poison apple, rank
(06:39):
and stinking. Personally, tomato vines are actually one of my
very favorite sense on the entire planet. It is a
lovely smell. It's so green and summary. I know at
this point you're probably wondering why the Europeans thought the
tomato was poisonous. They had a couple of reasons. Actually,
wealthy Europeans like to eat off these pewter plates which
(07:05):
had a lot of lead. Oh, tomatoes have a lot
of acid, And turns out acid leads to leakage leads
to lead, poisoning leads to death sometimes. So it's like
like Flint Michigan on a platform, right, beautiful. Yeah, so
you can see how they make that connection. Okay, sure, yeah.
(07:26):
Poor people didn't have this problem, however, because they weren't
eating off the fancy pewter plates, so they would eat tomatoes,
particularly in Italy. So there's something we can lay some
of the blame on. French botanist Joseph Piton. In two
he made what may well be the first botanical classification.
(07:47):
Previous botanists had recognized the relationship to the suleny c
I family, but Piton disputed the subclass sullen numb instead
thought they belonged in a new grouping of plants called
leco person, which is Greek for wolf peach. So fantastic.
Why don't we call it that. I'm gonna start right
(08:09):
now is the time we're going to start a new trend. Right.
The term is similar to the old German term meaning
the same and stint from the belief that members of
the solana c I family, the like say wolf Spain
or nightshade, could be used to summon werewolves. Isn't that awesome?
It's some of these plants were hallucinogenic, So that's a
(08:30):
good reason why people might have thought that I cannot
tell you how happy I am, and we get to
talk about wolves Spaine and wear wolves in this episode. Yeah,
I had no idea about that. I knew about the
night shade, I didn't know about the werewolves. Werewolves are
always you know, they're a surprise. They're popping up on you.
You never see them coming. That's true. You really should
(08:51):
though a full moon thing. Yeah, I mean, come on,
pay attention, Come on. Carl Linnas, the guy who invented
six level taxonomy didn't really help by reversing Paton's classification
but keeping the name like oper scon Yeah, there's a
whole website called tomatoes are Evil. By the way, I
(09:11):
just want to throw that out there. Is it about
how Yeah, I think it's a joke. I couldn't really tell.
I'm pretty sure it's a joke. And it's like the
tomato ruined your whole life and here's how. And just
like examples from history of how people fought negatively about
the tomato, but the French might not have had the
(09:35):
same hang up because they refer to the tomato as
palm damor our love apples brief aside. Here, the etymology
of this lovely term is debated and delightful, and it
hinges on the origins of the Italian word for tomato,
which is palmadoro. Okay, there are two popular stories for
how this name came about. First, that it derives from
palm to oro or the golden apple. As we said,
(09:58):
a lot of the tomatoes at the time were more
hello than read when they were ripe. And adding to this,
a popular opera in seventeenth century Italy was called It
was a story of Heiris's golden apple, you know, inscribed
to the most beautiful Goddess caused a lot of problems. Yeah,
so the phrase was definitely in the public's consciousness at
the time, which makes some people think that, you know,
(10:19):
they were like, oh, look, look it's like a tiny
little golden apple, right. Cool but less romantic and perhaps
more likely, the name may have derived from Pomo di moro,
or fruit of the Moors, that the Moorish people were
known at the time for introducing exotic foods to the
Mediterranean or to the North Mediterranean. Rather pomad Morrow, for example,
was also a term for egg plants around that time. Now,
(10:42):
believers in each legend explained the other by saying that
English historians later mistranslated the etymology and believers in both
sometimes say that the French mistranslated pomadoro to get palms
d more. The story here goes that a French traveler
asked an Italian chef about a particularly excellent dinner, and
when the started talking about pomadoro, the French dude or
(11:03):
you know, human, misheard and subbed in words from his
own language, palm dmore. Ah, so it's kind of like
he said, she said, Blame the French, plame the English. Sure,
either way, the tomato really did grow very well in
southern end Or province. Sheal France. Where was that extra
world are coming from? I don't know, let's keep going.
(11:23):
It was introduced there via cultural trade with northern Italy,
though supposedly the tomato was grown in France for a
whole generation as like a like a bug repellent, like
an aunt in mosquito repellent in gardens before anyone was
willing to try eating them. That is a very interesting
solution to an aunt and mosquito problem. Do tomatoes keepaway
aunt mosquitoes? I'm not sure. I didn't run across that
(11:45):
in my research. And how they do? I feel like
it would attract them. I think I think it's more
the vines okay, like the nightshade. The vines are okay,
all right. Slowly Europe started accepting the tomato as a
thing that could be eaten with how killing you. It
started appearing in eighteenth century British soups and more widely
on French menus. It made its way to Asia, and
(12:09):
it's around this time they started making some headway in
the US, thanks in part to one Thomas Jefferson. He
also also all the time I Know. In seventeen ten,
the first known or written mention of the tomato in
North America popped up in William Salmon's Biologica. It appeared
in a few periodicals in the years following, but was
(12:31):
still viewed with suspicion. But as it grew more accepted,
a new menace appeared, the green tomato worm. Green tomato worm.
That's right, here's the quote. The tomato in all of
our gardens is infested with a very large, thick bodied
green worm with o bleak white steriles along its sides
(12:54):
and a curved, thorn like horn at the end of
its back. That's terrify. Yes, if this thing weren't like
a centimeter long I'd be really upset. It can't have
been that big, right, I mean, well, I don't know, okay.
Ralph Waldo Amerson described these worms as an object of
much terror. My goodness, I'm looking up a picture right now.
(13:19):
Another man, Dr Fuller, decried the worm as being quote
poisonous as a rattle snake, and that the thing would
spit at you and cause immediate swelling. What this sounds
like something like something out of an alien movie. It
sounds I would not want to encounter this, That's all
I know. All the pictures I'm coming up with are
(13:40):
these incredibly adorable, like slightly bulbous green caterpillars. They were terrifying.
Apparently they're so cute. Are you sure you're just not
one of those people that like, well, okay, it looks
a little bit terrifying, but it but like mostly, I mean,
this could be a san real character. It could be
a in real character. The head does look like the
(14:02):
head of the queen from Alien a little bit, okay.
And the size, what is the size they're they're like
they're like palm length, okay. Aforementioned Thomas Jefferson felt no
such fear at this worm. However, and apparently his daughters
and granddaughters liked to use them in things like gumbo.
(14:23):
The tomatoes, not the worms. Yeah, oh gosh, I'm guessing. Well, yeah,
I would assume because if the worm fear is sweeping
the nation is keeping people away from tomatoes. He felt
no fear at either the tomato or the worm, and
in eighteen four speech, Jefferson's son in law said that
despite being an unknown entity for ten years, tomatoes were
(14:46):
by the time of the speech all the rage. Another
theory is that in eighteen thirty Cornel Robert Gibbon Johnson
decided he was going to eat a basket of tomatoes
on the court how steps, and a crowd gathered to
watch him slowly die, and when nothing happened, people were like, oh,
(15:07):
maybe we can eat this thing. It'll be fine. So
maybe that was one way that the tomato became more
acceptably accepted. Yes, our buddy Brilliant Savarin wrote in his
book The Physiology of Taste that the tomato was a
newly popular thing in Paris at the time. He said
that it had been almost entirely unknown fifteen years previous,
(15:28):
much like in America. He didn't write that part but
I'm just drawing a parallel. He said that at first
they were very expensive, but now common in markets. He
said it was introduced to Paris by the influx of
people from the south of France during the Revolution, and
he said, quote, tomatoes are a great blessing to food cookery.
They make excellent sauces which go well with every kind
of meat. Oh, yeah, that sounds which I think it's true. Yeah,
(15:52):
I agree. Thanks in part to canning and to the
Civil Wars and need for canned goods, tomatoes, which were
particularly suited for being canned, grew in popularity, culminating in
when Joseph Campbell Wait that Campbell yep that Campbell introduced
canned tomato soup m a subject of art and much debate.
(16:17):
I find people are very polarized about tomato soup. I
think that's a whole other episode, for sure. Definitely. A
couple of years before this, in eight seven, a US
tariff placed a ten tax increase on vegetables but not
on fruit. Tomato importer John Nicks was having none of it.
(16:37):
Any suit apport New York claiming that since tomatoes really
were fruit, they should be exempt makes sense. Yet the
Justice ever seeing the case, disagreed, writing that vegetables quote
usually served at dinner in with or after the soup,
fish or meats, which constitute the principal part of the
root past, and not like fruits, generally as a dessert
(17:00):
end quote. This. This case went to the Supreme Court.
That was a justice of the Supreme Court who said
that and and this, this tomato is a is legally
a vegetable. Law has influenced other tariff cases, like there
was one from where an importer of pillows that were
shaped like animals argued that they did not have to
(17:20):
pay a pillow tariff because their product was actually a
stuffed animal. I can see that that didn't work either.
Nice try, but yes, this canning technology lead to a
dramatic increase in use of and demand for tomatoes, which
were too delicate to really travel at the time. Speaking
(17:43):
of yes, in the nineteen hundreds, breeders like Alexander W.
Livingston started developing a lot of the surviving strains of
what we today call heirloom tomatoes. These folks were part
of a larger scientific and or agricultural movement to category
eyes and perfect plants and animals of all kinds uh.
(18:04):
This is when a lot of the competitive fairs and
growing competitions that we still have today, mostly in rural
areas but kind of kind of all over the place
started really popping up, and there was there was a
hole to do about competitive pigeon breeding in Vienna. I
just wanted to throw that in the thing. Um. Anyway,
a lot of a lot of the tomato strains developed
(18:24):
during this time to be the tastiest or biggest, or weirdest,
or sturdiest or otherwise superlative have been lost, but lots
of others were kept and passed down through the generations.
And by nineteen twenty, I just wanted to throw this
in there. Hot tomato was slaying for an attractive lady
based on the idea of you know, like like plumpness,
you know, right, yeah, sure. I also want to mention
(18:48):
in our notes sometimes when when when Annie has reached
a like a stopping point she that doesn't necessarily need
to be stopping point, she she puts it in big,
big block letters, this could probably be expanded upon something
like that. And she did this right after the Tomato
Hot Ladies slang note. And I just really had a
good giggle to myself thinking about specifically the playing portion
(19:12):
being expanded upon. She didn't mean that, she meant the
scientific part. Sometimes I get excited. You guys, I do
love some slang. It's really great. Yes. Uh. Anyway, um
circle of the nineteen thirties, refrigeration and shipping technologies were
improving to the point that large scale farms could provide
produce to wide regions, but most heirloom tomatoes were way
(19:36):
too finicky for that, so agricultural researchers were set to
the task of making sturdier, more uniform tomatoes. And that's
where our hybrids come from. Uh. These these strains were
developed to be more resistant to disease and to have
thicker skins and brighter colors. Um, you know, making sure
that they wouldn't burst during shipping and that they would
look pretty on store shelves. Legend has it that the
(19:57):
labs instructed their scientists to think of what would make
a tomato a good projectile and work on developing traits
from there, which brings us to Yes. Before we move
on from the history, I want to add this random
factory because I was really curious about why in pop
culture people throw rotten tomatoes at performances or performers they
(20:19):
don't like, hence the website of that name, rotten tomatoes
dot com. Yes, turns out people have never really thrown tomatoes,
not on mass anyway. But they have thrown peanuts, which
is where peanut gallery comes from, eggs, jelly beans much later,
even at a Beatles concert. Yeah, and in the case
(20:39):
of Emperor Ella Gabala's yeah, venomous snakes. Venomous snakes, he
threw venomous snakes, but he actually threw the more at
the crowd and more for his amusement. Oh, he seems
like a great guy, doesn't he. I can't imagine living
under his rule. He also did it to clear people
out if he just wanted to get home more quickly.
(21:02):
To be super fair, I've had I've had concert experiences
when the show is over, Like, I would definitely throw
any mistakes snakes into the crowd if I could get
out of there in like less than forty five minutes.
Learning a lot about you, Laurens sorry about it this process.
Lauren wants to get out of their A S A P.
Not all the time. I can be patient. There is
(21:25):
one known documented case of tomatoes being thrown at a
performer in the US, where the crowds were known as
quote the rowdiest of all, and audience members showed up
with armfuls of foods fit for hurling. Yes, and this included,
at least in this one case, tomatoes, which were cheap,
(21:46):
smelly throwing size, and they made a nice splat on impact.
Mm hmmm. Here's a snippet from the three New York
Times article detailing performer John rich She's harrowing experience. A
large tomato thrown from the gallery struck him square between
(22:06):
the eyes. Then the tomatoes flew thick and fast, and
which he fled for the stage door. The door was locked,
and he ran the gauntlet for the ticket office through
a perfect shower of tomatoes. Huh, isn't that a lovely image?
They really painted a good picture there. I can should
(22:27):
see this guy running for it and the doors locked,
tomatoes hails flying at him. I'm curious. I'm kind of
curious about his performance. I know he was trying to
do a tight rope thing. I know that doesn't seem
deserving of I know that seems like an overreaction. Well,
(22:47):
they were the rowdiest audiences of all, so Peter pet Ah,
they did encourage the throwing of tomatoes at people wearing
fur due to their splat factor and color. And here's
a quote from the campaign, uh for wearers be warned.
Vigilante vegetables are ready to paint the town red. Yeah.
(23:10):
But other than that, no real scientific or historical basis.
But I mean that New York Times article that was
pretty good. I might I might feel like, well, we're
going with that from now on. So that wraps up
our history segment. Well, now let's talk about some science. Yes,
(23:31):
but first let's take a quick break again for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor.
So in in having wrapped up the history portion, I
want to go into a little bit more history. But
(23:52):
it's really like the modern history of the tomato, right.
But to talk about that, we need to talk about
that very first wild tomato species, the pimp um, because
it is the ancestor of all of the varieties of
tomato that we know and love today. Properly the slantum pimpanellifolium. Yeah, yeah, totally,
(24:13):
but but it's known to botanists as the pimp Its
fruit is the size of a p so tiny, yeah
and really cute um and it still grows wild in
Peru and Ecuador. Back in the nineteen forties or so,
the pimp was one of the species that researchers were
drawing from in developing heartier strains of tomatoes. There was
(24:33):
actually a widespread push to genetically map the tomato at
the time, led by one at Charles MADERA Rick or C. N. Rick,
a biologist who was once referred to as a cross
between Charles Darwin and Indiana Jones. That's excellent, good for him, right.
His seed collecting expeditions to South America in the nineteen
forties and fifties, along with advances in genetics in the
(24:55):
sixties and seventies, led to our current understanding of the
tomato on on assigned to level. There's there's a tomato
genetics research center in his name at UC Davis. Wow,
which I love. And and if you, if anyone listening
is a very serious tomato grower, you can get in
touch with them then and get them get some interesting
information about tomato seeds and growing and uh and like
(25:19):
even like seed exchange kind of programs where like if
you want to try and grow on something, or like
you want to send some of yours into get all
the research mapped up. It's really cool anyway. Part of
their work has been in mapping tomato species genomes to
find out what kind of genetic diversity we're dealing with
in in modern wild and cultivated plants as often. They
had sequenced three hundred and sixty varieties and found that
(25:42):
domestication of the tomato has depleted its gene pool in
a few in a few specific areas, including size, with
with larger fruit being preferred, and uh a lot of
hybrid tomatoes are in fact a hundred times larger than
that original uh pimp tomato, and also in the genetic
area of disease resistance, with a sturdy but but narrow
(26:03):
band of of diseases accounted for. So what does this
mean practically, Well, genetic diversity is good. It allows for
happenstance that can create new excellent traits. So another part
of their work is trying to UH to basically undo
some of the work that was done in creating and
propagating these hybrids. M Meanwhile, that tough skin that was
(26:27):
bred into modern hybrid tomatoes may be good for something tires.
What tires? We're talking about tires again. How is this happening? Okay? So,
one one of the ingredients in rubber tires is a
filler that's called carbon black, and it's it's a petroleum
based substance that makes the rubber more durable. It's actually
(26:48):
about a third of the makeup of a rubber tire.
But since it's made from crude oil, it's not really
great for the environment, and its price is at the
whim of the global oil industry. And since we've got
more vehicles on the road than ever before, the tire
industry is looking for replacement solutions. Enter a research team
led by Ohio State University. They published a paper in
(27:09):
early seventeen about how a mixture of tomato peels for
stability and eggshells for micro structure strength can replace a
portion of carbon black in rubber tires. It's fantastic and
if this catches on, it could help also reduce food
waste because the shells from eggs that are cracked before
delivery and tomato skins that go and used in the
process of making processed sauces could be collected and put
(27:32):
to work. I love that that's so great. Every tire
story you've talked about so far has been excellent. I
hope that the tradition continues. We we used to have
we used to have a pizza break, and now now
we've got a tire break. Yeah, they're both great. Yeah,
we're evolving. The pizza one is obvious. I mean obviously. Um.
I heard a story on NPR a couple of years
(27:52):
ago about how most people probably have never had a
true heirloom tomato because in like grocery stores, what you're
getting is a very uh yeah, like yeah, yeah, they
might have like like five varieties of tomato, but they're
all they're all hybrids. Yeah, I remember its sounding very dire.
Is called the airloom tomato problem. Yeah. It made me
(28:16):
very sad because I probably have had a real one
before in my life. But they were saying, the taste
difference is so spectacular. Yeah, we'll try to look that
up and post it read about it. Yeah, definitely, And
a lot of a lot of the kind of marketing
buzz around heirloom tomatoes is that is that they have
so much more flavor than the hybrid products that were
(28:37):
kind of used to because you know, we weren't. We
weren't genetically selecting for flavor when we were developing those tomatoes.
And so a lot of the proponents of growing and
consuming heirlooms are saying that, like, like, well, it has
a flavor, and that's why it's a little bit harder
to you know, it's a little bit more delicate to
ship and stuff. But but think of the flavor. Yes,
(28:57):
the flavor and way I think that wraps up tomatoes. Yeah,
and if you're thinking, gee, that was a short episode
about something so large and important to the world that
the tomatoes themselves are large, they're relatively small. But but
but yeah, we we can't go into every tomato product
(29:17):
in this episode. Now we will do that in individual episodes, Yes,
a lot. Yeah. I we've gotten request for Ketchup, and
I'm dying to talk about it because I don't know
if I've mentioned it on here. I've definitely said it
to listeners. But I had a very weird engross Ketchup
phase when I was a kid where I was just
like eating Ketchup. I preferred the Ketchup to the fries,
Like I'd get the fries and just use them as
(29:39):
a vehicle. Aw sometimes I wouldn't even eat them. I
just knew it was more acceptable than getting catch. So yes,
we will talk about these products specifically at a later date,
but for now, this brings us to our a listener
male segment. Sophia wrote in about some ancient gin. She says, hello,
(30:02):
I listened to your podcast on gen and I remembered
something I learned on the British History podcast that might
interest you. Maya hul who works on the oh Aka
a Nick Beaker burial project. That sounds right, I probably
bitchered it, I apologize, was interviewed and she mentioned that
among the grave goods was a drinking vessel which may
(30:24):
have held an early form of gin. The grave dates
back to the Bronze Age in Scotland, and residue found
in the vessel indicates the presence of juniper and meadow sweet. Obviously,
juniper is essential for the making of gin. Meadow sweet,
on the other hand, is a flower with honey like
flavor that could have been used to sweeten the gin.
As a result of this discovery, and due to the
(30:47):
publicity surrounding this project, a distillery has decided to make
their own meadow sweet Gin Lovely Yeah, it isn't available
yet and it may only have a limited release, but
it's exciting to think we might have an opportunity to
taste a variation on a beverage that's over two thousand
years old. Oh that is exciting. I know. I agree wholeheartedly,
(31:09):
and I hope that we get the chance to try
this gin somehow. Absolutely. Oh, let's be on the lookout
for that. Meanwhile, Erica wrote in in response to our
apple pie episode and said, you mentioned the notion of
a fried big Mac to go along with McDonald's o
G fried apple pies. I wanted to show you something
glorious in case you've never experienced. Look, boug this magical
(31:31):
Korean trend of vloggers cooking and consuming giant portions of
food in one sitting while live streaming. It's amazing and entrancing,
in therapeutic and so adorable. This girl is one of
my faiths because she uses words like faith and gets
really nuts with recipes. So here's her episode with deep
Fried Big Max and in Japan so you know it's
(31:52):
even better, and included a video link which we will
share out to you. Yes, and I watched it. Uh,
I've never heard of this. It was, I will add horrifying.
It was like just because I can't imagine. Sure, she
(32:13):
like four Big Max Fried and it seems it seems
like it's it seems like a magic trick, like it
seems like it's impossible, and it has like how many
calories are in it? She calculates it. It's like this thing.
She just she liked deep Fried, the fries, deep Fried,
(32:34):
the four Big Max and the apple pies and add
like a soft drink of some kind. Anyway, Uh, yeah,
it was. I never heard of it, and I did
enjoy it, but there was a part of me that
was like screaming on the inside. So yeah, check that out. Yeah,
please enjoy. Meanwhile, if you want to let us know
(32:57):
about anything that you think would delight or horrify us,
you can get in touch and let us do so. Yes, um,
you can get in touch and let us do so.
You absolutely can let us do so. Cool. We have
an email address. It is food stuff at how stuffworks
dot com. We are also available on social media on Instagram.
We are at food stuff on Facebook and Twitter. We
(33:20):
are food stuff hs W. You can find a se've
got faith in you. We hope to hear from you,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
here with
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Annie Reeve and
I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we're talking about the tomatoes,
the tomato of catchup soup. Fame's fame, sure, And while
it might be incredibly popular in a whole range of
products today, it used to be quite feared. Yeah, people
were terrified of the tomato. And it's gone through a
(00:31):
lot of names over its history. The poisonous apple, love apple,
the wolf peach, wolf peach, I love it, tax evader, pimp.
No really used to go by that. It almost makes
you want to call the whole thing off. But never fear.
(00:51):
We don't call things off here at food Stuff. Also,
don't throw tomatoes at us for that or any future
terrible jokes. Please. The potato tomato thing is going to
come back, so sorry about it. So so let's let's
kick this off, as we generally do, by talking about
what is it? Well, what is it? Laan, It's delicious,
it is. The tomato is a fruit that grows on
(01:12):
tenderish stems that can be either bushy or vine like.
And yes, according to scientific taxonomy, it is a fruit.
It grows from the ovary of a flower and it
contains seeds fruit. Um, it's actually a berry technically, but
according to the law that can be a different story.
More on that later. The word comes from the as
(01:33):
te tama til which we mentioned in our Bloody Marry episode,
and that's said to come from the root to swell
or to plump, meaning something like a like the swelling
fruit makes sense sure, And the English spelling of tomato
is thought to have been influenced by the word potato,
which originated a bit earlier, but around the same time. Okay,
there you go. They are a perennial plant, which means
(01:54):
for all those gardeners out there, that they will live
more than one year if you protect them from winter frosts.
But they're usually grown as an annual do to winter frosts,
that is, for a single season, and then replaced with
new seeds or new plants. The bushy varieties are usually
what's called determinate tomatoes, which which fruit all at once
uh during during their growing season over the course of
(02:15):
just a couple of weeks, So all of a sudden,
you go from zero to all all the effing tomatoes. Yeah.
The viney ones, meanwhile, are usually indeterminate tomatoes. Which means
that they'll bloom and fruit like individual clusters of tomatoes
over the course of of a longer season. I've always
wanted to grow tomatoes, but I've been told that that
is a tricky one to start with. Yeah, and I
(02:36):
have a bad track record those plants. Yeah, we both
kind of have black thumbs or not. I don't know.
Minds like greenish black, Okay, yeah, yeah, okay, Well you've
had some success, there's potential for success for you. Yeah. Yeah,
mind's like Wicked, which of the West colors? Yeah, that's okay. Yeah.
(02:57):
Throughout throughout history, um, most tomatoes that people ate were
what we now call heirloom tomatoes, meaning that they fruit
via open pollination and their seeds generally produce about the
same fruit as their parents. Lots of the tomatoes were
having grocery stores today, though, are known as hybrid tomatoes.
That is, they were developed from wild strains and must
(03:17):
be carefully cross pollinated in order to produce standardized fruit
or order fruit at all. Really, because if you if
you plant seeds from them, they're not guaranteed to grow fruit,
let alone of fruit resembling their parent plant. Oh yeah,
Tomatoes in general are hecken popular. They're one of the
largest most lucrative vegetable crops in the world. Heavy scare quotes.
(03:39):
They're they're up there with like potatoes, onions, and lettuce,
which are big ones. Yeah, the global industry was worth
four point two billion dollars as of two thousand three,
and it's generally an industry that sees increases year over year,
so it's probably even bigger now. Yeah, probably, But this
was not always so, no way, not at all. Like
any said earlier, people used to be really scared of them.
(04:01):
And we'll get to that right after. We take a
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you sponsor. So the earliest ancestor of the tomato
most likely originated in South and Central America, where it
(04:23):
descended and evolved from the deadly nightshade plant over millions
of years. It was small and probably more yellow than red,
and the leaves were slightly poisonous, and the small, more
yellow than red version was called the pimp by the way,
still around yes, absolutely, around five b C. The Aztecs
domesticated the tomato and began using it in their cooking,
(04:46):
also sometimes as a hallucinogenic and the seeds as an aphrodisiac. Yeah,
very useful. Um. From there, other South and Central American
civilizations integrated the tomato into their cuisine. Freakness sake. So
you have to talk about Christopher Columbus again again, pops
(05:07):
up all the time. He probably ran across tomatoes in
and maybe possibly took them back to Europe or their
seeds at least. Yeah, we're not positive. Spanish conquisador Hernan
Cortez for sure did, however, and took the seeds he
retreat from the fallen aastic city of Toolan to Europe.
In By the fifteen forties, Spain was producing tomatoes. A
(05:32):
fifteen forty four Nepalese cookbook contained of the first known
written reference to the tomato. Arthur Pietro and Mattioli classified
the tomato as a man drake and a nightshade. This
was not the best thing to be classified as. Italian
nobility used the plan as a table top decoration, believing
the tomato to be poisonous. How Edgy and goth I know, like,
(05:56):
let's let's take this beautiful man drink and put it
on our table. This poisonous thing yeah, just put it
where we eat, I mean, as it turns out. Yeah, yeah,
I know. Ultimately everything was fine. Yes. The English also
believed that the tomato was poisonous after the introduction of
the plant in The word tomato first appeared two years
(06:19):
earlier in but it wasn't the most flattering mentioned. John
Gerard's popular English herbal described the tomato as poisonous and
quote of rank and stinking savor, and in part because
of this, the tomato earned the nickname poison apple, rank
(06:39):
and stinking. Personally, tomato vines are actually one of my
very favorite sense on the entire planet. It is a
lovely smell. It's so green and summary. I know at
this point you're probably wondering why the Europeans thought the
tomato was poisonous. They had a couple of reasons. Actually,
wealthy Europeans like to eat off these pewter plates which
(07:05):
had a lot of lead. Oh, tomatoes have a lot
of acid, And turns out acid leads to leakage leads
to lead, poisoning leads to death sometimes. So it's like
like Flint Michigan on a platform, right, beautiful. Yeah, so
you can see how they make that connection. Okay, sure, yeah.
(07:26):
Poor people didn't have this problem, however, because they weren't
eating off the fancy pewter plates, so they would eat tomatoes,
particularly in Italy. So there's something we can lay some
of the blame on. French botanist Joseph Piton. In two
he made what may well be the first botanical classification.
(07:47):
Previous botanists had recognized the relationship to the suleny c
I family, but Piton disputed the subclass sullen numb instead
thought they belonged in a new grouping of plants called
leco person, which is Greek for wolf peach. So fantastic.
Why don't we call it that. I'm gonna start right
(08:09):
now is the time we're going to start a new trend. Right.
The term is similar to the old German term meaning
the same and stint from the belief that members of
the solana c I family, the like say wolf Spain
or nightshade, could be used to summon werewolves. Isn't that awesome?
It's some of these plants were hallucinogenic, So that's a
(08:30):
good reason why people might have thought that I cannot
tell you how happy I am, and we get to
talk about wolves Spaine and wear wolves in this episode. Yeah,
I had no idea about that. I knew about the
night shade, I didn't know about the werewolves. Werewolves are
always you know, they're a surprise. They're popping up on you.
You never see them coming. That's true. You really should
(08:51):
though a full moon thing. Yeah, I mean, come on,
pay attention, Come on. Carl Linnas, the guy who invented
six level taxonomy didn't really help by reversing Paton's classification
but keeping the name like oper scon Yeah, there's a
whole website called tomatoes are Evil. By the way, I
(09:11):
just want to throw that out there. Is it about
how Yeah, I think it's a joke. I couldn't really tell.
I'm pretty sure it's a joke. And it's like the
tomato ruined your whole life and here's how. And just
like examples from history of how people fought negatively about
the tomato, but the French might not have had the
(09:35):
same hang up because they refer to the tomato as
palm damor our love apples brief aside. Here, the etymology
of this lovely term is debated and delightful, and it
hinges on the origins of the Italian word for tomato,
which is palmadoro. Okay, there are two popular stories for
how this name came about. First, that it derives from
palm to oro or the golden apple. As we said,
(09:58):
a lot of the tomatoes at the time were more
hello than read when they were ripe. And adding to this,
a popular opera in seventeenth century Italy was called It
was a story of Heiris's golden apple, you know, inscribed
to the most beautiful Goddess caused a lot of problems. Yeah,
so the phrase was definitely in the public's consciousness at
the time, which makes some people think that, you know,
(10:19):
they were like, oh, look, look it's like a tiny
little golden apple, right. Cool but less romantic and perhaps
more likely, the name may have derived from Pomo di moro,
or fruit of the Moors, that the Moorish people were
known at the time for introducing exotic foods to the
Mediterranean or to the North Mediterranean. Rather pomad Morrow, for example,
was also a term for egg plants around that time. Now,
(10:42):
believers in each legend explained the other by saying that
English historians later mistranslated the etymology and believers in both
sometimes say that the French mistranslated pomadoro to get palms
d more. The story here goes that a French traveler
asked an Italian chef about a particularly excellent dinner, and
when the started talking about pomadoro, the French dude or
(11:03):
you know, human, misheard and subbed in words from his
own language, palm dmore. Ah, so it's kind of like
he said, she said, Blame the French, plame the English. Sure,
either way, the tomato really did grow very well in
southern end Or province. Sheal France. Where was that extra
world are coming from? I don't know, let's keep going.
(11:23):
It was introduced there via cultural trade with northern Italy,
though supposedly the tomato was grown in France for a
whole generation as like a like a bug repellent, like
an aunt in mosquito repellent in gardens before anyone was
willing to try eating them. That is a very interesting
solution to an aunt and mosquito problem. Do tomatoes keepaway
aunt mosquitoes? I'm not sure. I didn't run across that
(11:45):
in my research. And how they do? I feel like
it would attract them. I think I think it's more
the vines okay, like the nightshade. The vines are okay,
all right. Slowly Europe started accepting the tomato as a
thing that could be eaten with how killing you. It
started appearing in eighteenth century British soups and more widely
on French menus. It made its way to Asia, and
(12:09):
it's around this time they started making some headway in
the US, thanks in part to one Thomas Jefferson. He
also also all the time I Know. In seventeen ten,
the first known or written mention of the tomato in
North America popped up in William Salmon's Biologica. It appeared
in a few periodicals in the years following, but was
(12:31):
still viewed with suspicion. But as it grew more accepted,
a new menace appeared, the green tomato worm. Green tomato worm.
That's right, here's the quote. The tomato in all of
our gardens is infested with a very large, thick bodied
green worm with o bleak white steriles along its sides
(12:54):
and a curved, thorn like horn at the end of
its back. That's terrify. Yes, if this thing weren't like
a centimeter long I'd be really upset. It can't have
been that big, right, I mean, well, I don't know, okay.
Ralph Waldo Amerson described these worms as an object of
much terror. My goodness, I'm looking up a picture right now.
(13:19):
Another man, Dr Fuller, decried the worm as being quote
poisonous as a rattle snake, and that the thing would
spit at you and cause immediate swelling. What this sounds
like something like something out of an alien movie. It
sounds I would not want to encounter this, That's all
I know. All the pictures I'm coming up with are
(13:40):
these incredibly adorable, like slightly bulbous green caterpillars. They were terrifying.
Apparently they're so cute. Are you sure you're just not
one of those people that like, well, okay, it looks
a little bit terrifying, but it but like mostly, I mean,
this could be a san real character. It could be
a in real character. The head does look like the
(14:02):
head of the queen from Alien a little bit, okay.
And the size, what is the size they're they're like
they're like palm length, okay. Aforementioned Thomas Jefferson felt no
such fear at this worm. However, and apparently his daughters
and granddaughters liked to use them in things like gumbo.
(14:23):
The tomatoes, not the worms. Yeah, oh gosh, I'm guessing. Well, yeah,
I would assume because if the worm fear is sweeping
the nation is keeping people away from tomatoes. He felt
no fear at either the tomato or the worm, and
in eighteen four speech, Jefferson's son in law said that
despite being an unknown entity for ten years, tomatoes were
(14:46):
by the time of the speech all the rage. Another
theory is that in eighteen thirty Cornel Robert Gibbon Johnson
decided he was going to eat a basket of tomatoes
on the court how steps, and a crowd gathered to
watch him slowly die, and when nothing happened, people were like, oh,
(15:07):
maybe we can eat this thing. It'll be fine. So
maybe that was one way that the tomato became more
acceptably accepted. Yes, our buddy Brilliant Savarin wrote in his
book The Physiology of Taste that the tomato was a
newly popular thing in Paris at the time. He said
that it had been almost entirely unknown fifteen years previous,
(15:28):
much like in America. He didn't write that part but
I'm just drawing a parallel. He said that at first
they were very expensive, but now common in markets. He
said it was introduced to Paris by the influx of
people from the south of France during the Revolution, and
he said, quote, tomatoes are a great blessing to food cookery.
They make excellent sauces which go well with every kind
of meat. Oh, yeah, that sounds which I think it's true. Yeah,
(15:52):
I agree. Thanks in part to canning and to the
Civil Wars and need for canned goods, tomatoes, which were
particularly suited for being canned, grew in popularity, culminating in
when Joseph Campbell Wait that Campbell yep that Campbell introduced
canned tomato soup m a subject of art and much debate.
(16:17):
I find people are very polarized about tomato soup. I
think that's a whole other episode, for sure. Definitely. A
couple of years before this, in eight seven, a US
tariff placed a ten tax increase on vegetables but not
on fruit. Tomato importer John Nicks was having none of it.
(16:37):
Any suit apport New York claiming that since tomatoes really
were fruit, they should be exempt makes sense. Yet the
Justice ever seeing the case, disagreed, writing that vegetables quote
usually served at dinner in with or after the soup,
fish or meats, which constitute the principal part of the
root past, and not like fruits, generally as a dessert
(17:00):
end quote. This. This case went to the Supreme Court.
That was a justice of the Supreme Court who said
that and and this, this tomato is a is legally
a vegetable. Law has influenced other tariff cases, like there
was one from where an importer of pillows that were
shaped like animals argued that they did not have to
(17:20):
pay a pillow tariff because their product was actually a
stuffed animal. I can see that that didn't work either.
Nice try, but yes, this canning technology lead to a
dramatic increase in use of and demand for tomatoes, which
were too delicate to really travel at the time. Speaking
(17:43):
of yes, in the nineteen hundreds, breeders like Alexander W.
Livingston started developing a lot of the surviving strains of
what we today call heirloom tomatoes. These folks were part
of a larger scientific and or agricultural movement to category
eyes and perfect plants and animals of all kinds uh.
(18:04):
This is when a lot of the competitive fairs and
growing competitions that we still have today, mostly in rural
areas but kind of kind of all over the place
started really popping up, and there was there was a
hole to do about competitive pigeon breeding in Vienna. I
just wanted to throw that in the thing. Um. Anyway,
a lot of a lot of the tomato strains developed
(18:24):
during this time to be the tastiest or biggest, or weirdest,
or sturdiest or otherwise superlative have been lost, but lots
of others were kept and passed down through the generations.
And by nineteen twenty, I just wanted to throw this
in there. Hot tomato was slaying for an attractive lady
based on the idea of you know, like like plumpness,
you know, right, yeah, sure. I also want to mention
(18:48):
in our notes sometimes when when when Annie has reached
a like a stopping point she that doesn't necessarily need
to be stopping point, she she puts it in big,
big block letters, this could probably be expanded upon something
like that. And she did this right after the Tomato
Hot Ladies slang note. And I just really had a
good giggle to myself thinking about specifically the playing portion
(19:12):
being expanded upon. She didn't mean that, she meant the
scientific part. Sometimes I get excited. You guys, I do
love some slang. It's really great. Yes. Uh. Anyway, um
circle of the nineteen thirties, refrigeration and shipping technologies were
improving to the point that large scale farms could provide
produce to wide regions, but most heirloom tomatoes were way
(19:36):
too finicky for that, so agricultural researchers were set to
the task of making sturdier, more uniform tomatoes. And that's
where our hybrids come from. Uh. These these strains were
developed to be more resistant to disease and to have
thicker skins and brighter colors. Um, you know, making sure
that they wouldn't burst during shipping and that they would
look pretty on store shelves. Legend has it that the
(19:57):
labs instructed their scientists to think of what would make
a tomato a good projectile and work on developing traits
from there, which brings us to Yes. Before we move
on from the history, I want to add this random
factory because I was really curious about why in pop
culture people throw rotten tomatoes at performances or performers they
(20:19):
don't like, hence the website of that name, rotten tomatoes
dot com. Yes, turns out people have never really thrown tomatoes,
not on mass anyway. But they have thrown peanuts, which
is where peanut gallery comes from, eggs, jelly beans much later,
even at a Beatles concert. Yeah, and in the case
(20:39):
of Emperor Ella Gabala's yeah, venomous snakes. Venomous snakes, he
threw venomous snakes, but he actually threw the more at
the crowd and more for his amusement. Oh, he seems
like a great guy, doesn't he. I can't imagine living
under his rule. He also did it to clear people
out if he just wanted to get home more quickly.
(21:02):
To be super fair, I've had I've had concert experiences
when the show is over, Like, I would definitely throw
any mistakes snakes into the crowd if I could get
out of there in like less than forty five minutes.
Learning a lot about you, Laurens sorry about it this process.
Lauren wants to get out of their A S A P.
Not all the time. I can be patient. There is
(21:25):
one known documented case of tomatoes being thrown at a
performer in the US, where the crowds were known as
quote the rowdiest of all, and audience members showed up
with armfuls of foods fit for hurling. Yes, and this included,
at least in this one case, tomatoes, which were cheap,
(21:46):
smelly throwing size, and they made a nice splat on impact.
Mm hmmm. Here's a snippet from the three New York
Times article detailing performer John rich She's harrowing experience. A
large tomato thrown from the gallery struck him square between
(22:06):
the eyes. Then the tomatoes flew thick and fast, and
which he fled for the stage door. The door was locked,
and he ran the gauntlet for the ticket office through
a perfect shower of tomatoes. Huh, isn't that a lovely image?
They really painted a good picture there. I can should
(22:27):
see this guy running for it and the doors locked,
tomatoes hails flying at him. I'm curious. I'm kind of
curious about his performance. I know he was trying to
do a tight rope thing. I know that doesn't seem
deserving of I know that seems like an overreaction. Well,
(22:47):
they were the rowdiest audiences of all, so Peter pet Ah,
they did encourage the throwing of tomatoes at people wearing
fur due to their splat factor and color. And here's
a quote from the campaign, uh for wearers be warned.
Vigilante vegetables are ready to paint the town red. Yeah.
(23:10):
But other than that, no real scientific or historical basis.
But I mean that New York Times article that was
pretty good. I might I might feel like, well, we're
going with that from now on. So that wraps up
our history segment. Well, now let's talk about some science. Yes,
(23:31):
but first let's take a quick break again for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor.
So in in having wrapped up the history portion, I
want to go into a little bit more history. But
(23:52):
it's really like the modern history of the tomato, right.
But to talk about that, we need to talk about
that very first wild tomato species, the pimp um, because
it is the ancestor of all of the varieties of
tomato that we know and love today. Properly the slantum pimpanellifolium. Yeah, yeah, totally,
(24:13):
but but it's known to botanists as the pimp Its
fruit is the size of a p so tiny, yeah
and really cute um and it still grows wild in
Peru and Ecuador. Back in the nineteen forties or so,
the pimp was one of the species that researchers were
drawing from in developing heartier strains of tomatoes. There was
(24:33):
actually a widespread push to genetically map the tomato at
the time, led by one at Charles MADERA Rick or C. N. Rick,
a biologist who was once referred to as a cross
between Charles Darwin and Indiana Jones. That's excellent, good for him, right.
His seed collecting expeditions to South America in the nineteen
forties and fifties, along with advances in genetics in the
(24:55):
sixties and seventies, led to our current understanding of the
tomato on on assigned to level. There's there's a tomato
genetics research center in his name at UC Davis. Wow,
which I love. And and if you, if anyone listening
is a very serious tomato grower, you can get in
touch with them then and get them get some interesting
information about tomato seeds and growing and uh and like
(25:19):
even like seed exchange kind of programs where like if
you want to try and grow on something, or like
you want to send some of yours into get all
the research mapped up. It's really cool anyway. Part of
their work has been in mapping tomato species genomes to
find out what kind of genetic diversity we're dealing with
in in modern wild and cultivated plants as often. They
had sequenced three hundred and sixty varieties and found that
(25:42):
domestication of the tomato has depleted its gene pool in
a few in a few specific areas, including size, with
with larger fruit being preferred, and uh a lot of
hybrid tomatoes are in fact a hundred times larger than
that original uh pimp tomato, and also in the genetic
area of disease resistance, with a sturdy but but narrow
(26:03):
band of of diseases accounted for. So what does this
mean practically, Well, genetic diversity is good. It allows for
happenstance that can create new excellent traits. So another part
of their work is trying to UH to basically undo
some of the work that was done in creating and
propagating these hybrids. M Meanwhile, that tough skin that was
(26:27):
bred into modern hybrid tomatoes may be good for something tires.
What tires? We're talking about tires again. How is this happening? Okay? So,
one one of the ingredients in rubber tires is a
filler that's called carbon black, and it's it's a petroleum
based substance that makes the rubber more durable. It's actually
(26:48):
about a third of the makeup of a rubber tire.
But since it's made from crude oil, it's not really
great for the environment, and its price is at the
whim of the global oil industry. And since we've got
more vehicles on the road than ever before, the tire
industry is looking for replacement solutions. Enter a research team
led by Ohio State University. They published a paper in
(27:09):
early seventeen about how a mixture of tomato peels for
stability and eggshells for micro structure strength can replace a
portion of carbon black in rubber tires. It's fantastic and
if this catches on, it could help also reduce food
waste because the shells from eggs that are cracked before
delivery and tomato skins that go and used in the
process of making processed sauces could be collected and put
(27:32):
to work. I love that that's so great. Every tire
story you've talked about so far has been excellent. I
hope that the tradition continues. We we used to have
we used to have a pizza break, and now now
we've got a tire break. Yeah, they're both great. Yeah,
we're evolving. The pizza one is obvious. I mean obviously. Um.
I heard a story on NPR a couple of years
(27:52):
ago about how most people probably have never had a
true heirloom tomato because in like grocery stores, what you're
getting is a very uh yeah, like yeah, yeah, they
might have like like five varieties of tomato, but they're
all they're all hybrids. Yeah, I remember its sounding very dire.
Is called the airloom tomato problem. Yeah. It made me
(28:16):
very sad because I probably have had a real one
before in my life. But they were saying, the taste
difference is so spectacular. Yeah, we'll try to look that
up and post it read about it. Yeah, definitely, And
a lot of a lot of the kind of marketing
buzz around heirloom tomatoes is that is that they have
so much more flavor than the hybrid products that were
(28:37):
kind of used to because you know, we weren't. We
weren't genetically selecting for flavor when we were developing those tomatoes.
And so a lot of the proponents of growing and
consuming heirlooms are saying that, like, like, well, it has
a flavor, and that's why it's a little bit harder
to you know, it's a little bit more delicate to
ship and stuff. But but think of the flavor. Yes,
(28:57):
the flavor and way I think that wraps up tomatoes. Yeah,
and if you're thinking, gee, that was a short episode
about something so large and important to the world that
the tomatoes themselves are large, they're relatively small. But but
but yeah, we we can't go into every tomato product
(29:17):
in this episode. Now we will do that in individual episodes, Yes,
a lot. Yeah. I we've gotten request for Ketchup, and
I'm dying to talk about it because I don't know
if I've mentioned it on here. I've definitely said it
to listeners. But I had a very weird engross Ketchup
phase when I was a kid where I was just
like eating Ketchup. I preferred the Ketchup to the fries,
Like I'd get the fries and just use them as
(29:39):
a vehicle. Aw sometimes I wouldn't even eat them. I
just knew it was more acceptable than getting catch. So yes,
we will talk about these products specifically at a later date,
but for now, this brings us to our a listener
male segment. Sophia wrote in about some ancient gin. She says, hello,
(30:02):
I listened to your podcast on gen and I remembered
something I learned on the British History podcast that might
interest you. Maya hul who works on the oh Aka
a Nick Beaker burial project. That sounds right, I probably
bitchered it, I apologize, was interviewed and she mentioned that
among the grave goods was a drinking vessel which may
(30:24):
have held an early form of gin. The grave dates
back to the Bronze Age in Scotland, and residue found
in the vessel indicates the presence of juniper and meadow sweet. Obviously,
juniper is essential for the making of gin. Meadow sweet,
on the other hand, is a flower with honey like
flavor that could have been used to sweeten the gin.
As a result of this discovery, and due to the
(30:47):
publicity surrounding this project, a distillery has decided to make
their own meadow sweet Gin Lovely Yeah, it isn't available
yet and it may only have a limited release, but
it's exciting to think we might have an opportunity to
taste a variation on a beverage that's over two thousand
years old. Oh that is exciting. I know. I agree wholeheartedly,
(31:09):
and I hope that we get the chance to try
this gin somehow. Absolutely. Oh, let's be on the lookout
for that. Meanwhile, Erica wrote in in response to our
apple pie episode and said, you mentioned the notion of
a fried big Mac to go along with McDonald's o
G fried apple pies. I wanted to show you something
glorious in case you've never experienced. Look, boug this magical
(31:31):
Korean trend of vloggers cooking and consuming giant portions of
food in one sitting while live streaming. It's amazing and entrancing,
in therapeutic and so adorable. This girl is one of
my faiths because she uses words like faith and gets
really nuts with recipes. So here's her episode with deep
Fried Big Max and in Japan so you know it's
(31:52):
even better, and included a video link which we will
share out to you. Yes, and I watched it. Uh,
I've never heard of this. It was, I will add horrifying.
It was like just because I can't imagine. Sure, she
(32:13):
like four Big Max Fried and it seems it seems
like it's it seems like a magic trick, like it
seems like it's impossible, and it has like how many
calories are in it? She calculates it. It's like this thing.
She just she liked deep Fried, the fries, deep Fried,
(32:34):
the four Big Max and the apple pies and add
like a soft drink of some kind. Anyway, Uh, yeah,
it was. I never heard of it, and I did
enjoy it, but there was a part of me that
was like screaming on the inside. So yeah, check that out. Yeah,
please enjoy. Meanwhile, if you want to let us know
(32:57):
about anything that you think would delight or horrify us,
you can get in touch and let us do so. Yes, um,
you can get in touch and let us do so.
You absolutely can let us do so. Cool. We have
an email address. It is food stuff at how stuffworks
dot com. We are also available on social media on Instagram.
We are at food stuff on Facebook and Twitter. We
(33:20):
are food stuff hs W. You can find a se've
got faith in you. We hope to hear from you,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
here with
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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