Pomme d’amour

by Esme Dutcher
 

     Tomato seeds leave the human body much as they enter it. They survive the gnashing and pounding of molars, they ride out the corrosive tempest of stomach acids, to return to the earth like Odysseus to Ithaca. The Pueblo people, it is thought, believed that watching the ingestion of tomato seeds blessed the observer with powers of divination. Perhaps witnessing the seeds begin their momentous journey, a journey more harrowing than what we humans undertake in order to continue our species, is what induces this mystical wisdom.

     The people of the New World were aware of the value of the tomato long before the Old World knew of its existence. And yet, can anyone imagine Italian cuisine without the tomato? Where would the modern appetite be without spaghetti in a savory marinara sauce? The earliest discovered cookbook containing tomato recipes was published in Naples in 1692, two centuries after Columbus stumbled upon the Americas.

     All of us know the beloved red tomato, small cherry tomatoes in a salad or hearty beefsteak slices on a sandwich. But tomatoes come in so many more possibilities than the American palate is familiar with. Tomatoes come in every color but blue; they can be multicolored and striped. The Black Krim tomato blends deep reds into plum purples. The Black Prince is the dark color of blood-soaked muscle. The Brandywine tomato ranges from black to a pink and green bruise. The Black Zebra is a rich red marbled with green. The Copia is a vibrant red striped with orange and yellow. The Delicious tomato was the cultivar from which the heaviest tomato was grown; it weighed in at 7 pounds and 12 ounces. The largest tomato plant was the Sungold, and reached 65 feet in length.

     Tomatoes were considered to be poisonous for many years in Britain and the American colonies. During the American Revolution, George Washington survived an assassination attempt in which he was fed a dish containing tomatoes. The misconception of this fruit being toxic is because it belongs to the nightshade family, a family in which many plants are poisonous. Because of this myth, instead of being grown for edible purposes, in the American colonies tomato plants were grown for ornamental use. The plant was used to satisfy the aesthetic appetite rather than the gastronomic. The tomato vine, with its pleasing herbaceous fragrance, pubescent leaves, yellow flowers, and, of course, its bright berry, would have been grown alongside the traditional and celebrated rose, lingered over by the floraphile, would have enthralled children playing in their parent’s garden, who, admiring the fruit more vivid than an apple, would have stolen a bite before being hauled off by a grown-up.

     On the other side of the spectrum, tomatoes were once thought to be aphrodisiacs. Through the 1920s to the 1940s in the USA an attractive woman was called a tomato. You can see her, ripe and lovely, cheeks round and red; you want to drag your lips along that luminescent sun-burnished flesh as you would her botanical counterpart; the inside of her mouth is a wet and pink treasure like the inside of a tomato. Can it be wondered at that tomatoes were thought to be aphrodisiacs? Puritans wouldn’t eat them because of this misconception. According to a legend on the origination of the tomato as aphrodisiac, a Frenchman ate tomatoes in a meal during his travels. He was captivated by the taste and asked the Italian chef what it was. The chef said “pomme de Maure” (apple of the Moors) but our Frenchman heard “Pomme d’amour.” Apple of love.

Esme Dutcher is a junior at Fairhaven College.  Her interests include rhizomes, Alexander Hamilton, cupcakes, and handshakes.  She spends her time getting dirt under her fingernails, reading poetry to plants, and letting juice from fruit drip down her wrists.  One of her life goals is to learn to yodel.

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