Love Apples

     About now I'm up to my ears in tomatoes.  My three thriving plants are currently producing over 50 ripe fruits daily.  (Remember-tomatoes are a fruit and not a vegetable.  See my post on February 6 "Fruit or Vegetable?)  But have you ever heard them referred to as "Love Apples?"  That's what my Father always called them and I never knew why until just recently when I did some tomato history research.

     The tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum, is native to South and Central America and one of the crops discovered by Cortez when he toured Montezuma's gardens.  Intrigued by the golden orbs (yes, they were probably yellow tomatoes) Cortez transported some seeds back to Europe where they were planted and tomatoes were grown there as ornamental curiosities, but not eaten.  As a member of the Deadly Nightshade family they were erroneously thought to be poisonous.  And there is some truth to that since the leaves are, in fact, deadly.

     Up until the end of the 18th Century physicians warned against eating tomatoes, fearing they caused serious and possibly fatal consequences like appendicitis and stomach cancer.  But that concern was put to rest when in 1820 Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson of Salem, NJ stood on the steps of the courthouse there in the middle of town and consumed an entire basket of tomatoes without suffering any ill effects, much to the amazement of the crowd standing by.  Announcing his intention in advance he drew a large audience of over 2,000 on-lookers who were certain he would surely die, which he did not.  It was at that point in history that the tomato was once and for all deemed safe to eat.

     But perhaps the single most influential advocate of the tomato was Joseph Campbell, who in 1897, created condensed tomato soup and sold it in cans to the public.  And in so doing endeared the tomato to the world.  The rest, as they say, is history.

     But back to my original question...How did the tomato come to be nick named the "love apple?"  You have to trace that moniker back to the 16th Century when tomatoes grown in North Africa were shipped to Italy where they were called, "pomo dei Mori" or "apples of the Moors."  But by the time they arrived in France that term had become transliterated into French as "pomme d'amour" or as we call them today, "love apples."  Now some would claim that it was the French who considered tomatoes to have aphrodisiac powers, hence the name "love apple."  But then again they also say the same about oysters and mushrooms, too.