The Secret Life of Tomatoes
(The author apologizes in advance for the rambling nature of this essay, which touches on barbecue, botany, the personalities of fruit, and my dog's gustatory proclivities.)
Tomatoes, for all their association
with Italian cooking, are a native American fruit, and when Europeans
first encountered them they believed them to be poisonous. This was not,
as moderns are so happy to assume, merely the stupidity of earlier generations;
tomatoes belong to the same botanical family as deadly nightshade. That
the tomato would be as deadly as its cousin was a perfectly reasonable
assumption, given the available evidence, and so we should not chide our
forebears for their caution. (The leaves of the tomato plant are, in fact,
mildly toxic, and so, far from being stupid, they were not even entirely
incorrect.)
What is really interesting about Europeans’
initial fear of tomatoes is that, in certain regional American cultures,
we have not entirely gotten over it. Come to North Carolina and mention
"barbecue" and you will run grave danger of starting an argument
the likes of which I assure you no Yankee wants to involve himself in.
The basics are this: all North Carolinians (excepting Communists, anyways)
consider the only True Barbecue to be smoked pork. The dispute concerns
the dressing. In the East, barbecue sauce consists of mostly vinegar and
peppers, and no tomato is even allowed in the kitchen while dinner is
being prepared. In the West, the sauce is similarly spicy, but starts
with a tomato base. Why the difference? The East was settled first, its
foodways established before the settlers figured out that tomatoes were
good to eat. The West was settled later, from a separate migration of
Europeans who had by now accepted the tomato.
Different region, same point: My wife’s
grandmother is from far downeast Maine, a microregion whose culture has
been, shall we say, less affected by the upheavals of the last two centuries
than most of New England. (I mean this in only the most affectionate possible
way; I sincerely wish there were more places like it.) A number of very
current recipes I have found Downeast correspond almost exactly to the
instructions of eighteenth-century cooks. A few years ago, my wife and
I asked her grandmother and great-aunt for their recipe for baked beans.
(An aside: do not ask two women from the same small town for a traditional
recipe unless you have several hours to hear out the ensuing argument.)
After we got them to agree, more or less, on the ingredients, Kathy’s
great-aunt added, dubiously, "You know, Nancy (their sister-in-law)
puts catsup in her beans." To which the other sister replied, indignantly,
"Well, who ever heard of putting catsup in your beans?"
After a lengthy discussion the two women
agreed that while a shake of catsup might be all right, anything more
was clearly suspect. Whatever you might have seen of baked beans elsewhere,
one simply does not add tomatoes to beans in Downeast Maine. Salt pork,
molasses, and an onion were enough to flavor the beans of the first white
New Englanders, and by God, they’re enough now. And, you know, they’re
wonderful baked beans, with or without the dubious shake of catsup. Sadly,
Boston—where it was once illegal to adulterate clam chowder with
tomatoes—has let slip the reins of tradition, although one has to
admit that the Portuguese immigrants to that city have done wonderful
things with tomatoes.
If regional foodways can be so persistent even in the up-to-the-minute
monoculture of turn-of-the-twenty-first-century America, one has to wonder
who was ever bold enough to eat a tomato in the first place. My suggestion?
It was a dog. Dogs are not fooled by the shape of a leaf or any Linnean
conceit about the kinship of plants. They simply go by their noses, and
they know a tasty meal when they find it.
The older of our two basset hounds, Feynman,
has wasted no time in discovering the Garden of Earthly Delights at the
back of our yard—in particular the cherry tomatoes that hang tantalizingly
over the garden fence. Sweet One Hundred, they are called, and although
the implied bounty is real enough to make the plant’s limbs droop
low enough even for a basset hound, it is unlikely to have any effect
on what we see in our salad bowls.
Admittedly, I have not witnessed Feynman
actually eating the tomatoes. I have, however, noticed her sniffing gingerly
at almost-ripe fruit, then licking her chops and walking away. (She has
remarkable patience, for a dog.) And, despite the constant abundance of
green cherry tomatoes, I have caught precious few of them actually ripe.
Suffice it to say she has the means, the motive, and the opportunity to
commit the crime, and certainly the intelligence to think of it.
Humans scoff at dogs’ intelligence
because they don’t build the Taj Mahal or atom bombs, but this is
more a matter of thumbs and egos than of intelligence. Dogs are smart
enough to know good eating, particularly basset hounds, and it would not
surprise me to learn that it was one of Feynman’s ancestors and not
one of mine who first developed a taste for ripe tomatoes. They have their
priorities straight.
Cherry tomatoes are only one of several varieties in our
small garden—we need some that grow taller than Feynman can’t
reach. But variety raises its own problems. First of all, there’s
cross-pollination to worry about. This is mainly a problem if you intend
to save your seeds and don’t want to create mutant Purple Brandywines.
(Note: If you know what you’re doing, it’s called a hybrid.
If you don’t, it’s a mutant. That’s science for you.) If
you’re happy starting fresh every year or planting hybrids, which
don’t reproduce true, then this isn’t a problem. We
don’t save seeds, at least not for now, but although I don’t
have to worry about consistency of breeding, I’m still a bit concerned
by what might be going on out there in the garden while I’m not looking.
It isn’t so much botany that worries me as the personalities of the
individual plants. Take Mr. Stripey, for example, which produces red fruit
with gold tiger stripes. What’s his first name? Is he Dick Stripey,
private eye, gun for hire? Or maybe Ted Stripey, television anchorman
with unmussable hair? Either way, I wouldn’t want to plant him next
to the Early Girls, who, to be frank, are a little on the tart side anyway.
We decided, after some consideration, to put the Lemon Boy next to the
Early Girls, thinking their virtue would be safe with him. I don’t
want anybody’s virtue compromised; it’s not that big a garden,
and word travels fast, particularly among the cucumbers.
As it happens, our main problem has been
with the German Johnsons, who are overrunning the garden like Hitler’s
minions overran Europe. Poor Mr. Stripey can barely get any sun, with
his neighbor using him as a tomato stake. Some year, I would like to find
out whether or not he makes good eating.
Though I suspect my dog will find out first.
— July 1998
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