Tomatoes

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John Gerard, an English botanist of the early seventeenth century, describes the tomato.

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John Leypoldt's botanical engraving of a tomato plant.

 

     The tomato originated in Peru and Ecuador and traveled by unknown means to areas of southern Mexico and northern Central America, where it was domesticated [1]. From 1519-1521, Hernán Cortes’s exploration of Mexico and conquest of the Aztecs led to the introduction of the tomato to Europe by the Spanish early in the sixteenth century [2].  However, according to a widely accepted view, the tomato was not introduced to the Ottoman Middle East until three centuries later, by the English consul John Barker at Aleppo [3].  This theory is consistent with the increase in the use of the tomato in Ottoman cookbooks after 1844 [4].

     In part, the slow pace of the tomato’s journey eastward can be attributed to Europeans’ ambivalent attitudes towards the fruit.  John Gerard, an English botanist, described the “love apples” as being of “ranke and stinking flavor”—certainly not a description of a desirable commodity [5].  The tomato was referred to as the “love apple” because the Europeans associated the Aztecs’ husking of the tomatillo with the female genital [6].  From their earliest encounters with the tomato, then, Europeans found the fruit obscene.  Further, Gerard asserts, “The pulp or meat is very full of moisture;” the fruit is “very cold, yea perhaps in the highest degree” [7].   The prevailing European view of medicine had stressed a balance of the four major fluids, or humors, in the body.  Eating foods that were cold and moist negatively influenced this balance of humors; thus, eating tomatoes was considered detrimental to health [8].

     Gerard’s text can be best understood by examining the role of botany in Early Modern Europe.  Botany was deemed a work for the benefit of the entire community, since understanding plant growth would increase the amount of foodstuffs and profit; this would ultimately aid the economy. [9] Further, as is evident in the discussion of the tomato, gardening was beneficial to general health, since many foods and herbs were assumed to have medicinal qualities. [10]  Herbals thus became more prevalent in England from 1558 until 1629 with the rise of the printing press. [11]  With such an increase in information, it is certainly reasonable to assume that gardening became easier.  Given its medicinal, financial, and aesthetic benefits, it is no wonder that gardening became popular in Early Modern Europe.   

     Konrad, the bishop-prince of Eichstatt, was among the noblemen of Europe to realize botany’s benefits.  He hired Basilius Besler, an apothecary and botanist, to manage his vast garden.  Prior to his death, Konrad commissioned Besler to compile an herbal of all of the plants in the garden; the herbal, The Besler Florilegium, was published in 1633 and included engravings of many artists, including Johann Leypoldt. [12]

     Leypoldt’s engraving of tomatoes is an example of a botanical illustration, which may help to improve understanding of botany’s goals.  Because botanical images are used to identify plants in nature, “The main goal of botanical illustration is not art, but scientific accuracy. It must portray a plant with the precision and level of detail.” [13]  The accuracy of the images is thus crucial, since, to identify plants, botanists compare the plants they see to those in the illustrations.  Several aspects of Leypoldt’s “Tomatoes” offer insight into how the utility of a botanical image was achieved by an artist. 

     Firstly, the depiction of all parts of the plant would be useful for someone trying to identify a plant.  In the words of one sixteenth-century botanist, “we have devoted the greatest diligence to secure that every plant should be depicted with its own roots, stalks, leaves, flowers, seeds and fruits.” [14].  Thus, the inclusion of every part of the plant was crucial in creating botanical images, since every part of the plant offered clues as to the identity of the plant.  Leypoldt thus paid special attention even to the roots, a part of the plant which would not have been seen while the plant was growing.  Interestingly, the attention given to the entire plant distinguishes Leypoldt’s image as Pre-Linnaean.  The Linnaean system for classifying organisms, introduced in the 1730s, placed special emphasis on identifying and naming organisms according to reproductive structures, since Linnaeus had classified organisms according to their reproductive capacities.  Botanical images from this time period therefore focused on depicting the flowers, and, more specifically, the stamen and pistils of plants—parts of the flower ignored by artists such as Leypoldt, who were more concerned with depicting the plant as a whole.  Post-Linnaean illustrations, in fact, often did not include roots, stems, or leaves at all, rather focusing solely on the flower. [15]

      Additionally, Leypoldt’s “Tomatoes” personifies the practicality of the botanical image in its depiction of tomatoes at several stages of development; some tomatoes are just sprouting, while others are ready to be harvested.  Rather than engrave the tomato exactly as it looked, Leypoldt likely attempted to convey how the plant would look during all four seasons, so that the botanist could identify the plant using one image regardless of the plant’s stage of development.  The image is therefore universally useful to botanists, regardless of season.

     Finally, the desire for accuracy is evident in the image’s medium—its very existence as a copper engraving.  Engravings in metal replaced woodcuttings and became prominent in the seventeenth century specifically because “the incision of metal plates permits a far more delicate line than does wood-cutting.” [16]  Thus, since the desire for accuracy in botanical illustrations required the utmost precision artists such as Leypoldt employed the most accurate techniques possible—in this case, engraving in metal.

     The tomato gradually gained acceptance in Europe, in part due to improvements in medicine during the Italian Renaissance.  By the mid-seventeenth century, Italian biologists had moved away from a humoral model of the body, thereby eliminating the health risks associated with tomatoes [17].  This contributed to a proliferation in the use of the tomato in Italian recipes by the eighteenth century [18]. 

     Perhaps, however, the tomato arrived in the Ottoman Empire prior to the nineteenth century, considering the Empire stretched as far west as North Africa—directly across the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain, where the tomato first entered Europe.  Sources written by the Ottomans mentioning any American foodstuffs are scarce, though such goods were certainly prevalent [19].  The lack of sources therefore complicates any assumption about the tomato’s first appearance in the empire; if other American foods were present in the Empire but were not mentioned by contemporary sources, the possibility that the tomato was among the newly introduced foods seems quite possible.  Considering the wide breadth of Ottoman trade and the strong presence of European merchants in such cities as Aleppo in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries [20], it seems likely that Ottomans could have cultivated the tomato before the nineteenth century. 

 

--Written by Melanie Sheehan

  

  1. David Gentilcore, Pomodoro!: A History of the Tomato in Italy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 3.
  2. Ibid., 3.
  3. "Syria under the last five Turkish Sultans," Appletons' Journal1. (1876): 519, Google Books.
  4. Tulay Artan, “Aspects of Ottoman Elites’ Food Consumption: Looking for “Staples,” “Luxuries,” and “Delicacies” in a Changing Century,” in Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922: An Introduction ed. Donald Quataert (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 114.
  5. John Gerard, The Herball, or, General Historie of Plants (London: Printed by Adam Islip, Joice Norton and Richard Whitakers, 1636), Ch. 60, https://archive.org/details/herballorgeneral00gera
  6. Gentilcore, 10.
  7. Gerard, Ch. 60.
  8. Gentilcore, 11-12.
  9. Jill Francis, “Order and Disorder in the Early Modern Garden, 1558-c. 1630” Garden History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 2008), 26, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25472392.
  10. Carole Rawcliffe, “Delectable Sightes and Fragrant Smelles': Gardens and Health in Late Medieval and Early Modern England,” Garden History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 2008), 3-21, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25472391.
  11. Francis, 23.
  12. Gerard Aymonin, introduction to The Besler Florilegium: Plants of the Four Seasons, trans. Eileen Finletter and Jean Ayer (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2008), 12-14.
  13. “Botanical Illustrations,” Botanical Gardens Conservation International, accessed November 15, 2014, http://www.bgci.org/resources/botanical_illustration/.
  14. Leonhart Fuchs, quoted in Erna Rice Eisendrath, “Portraits of Plants. A Limited Study of Plants,” Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, Vol. 48, No. 4 (November, 1961), 299, accessed November 16, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2395120.  
  15. Brent S. Elliot, “Botanical Art in the Age of Linnaeus,” The Linnaean, Special Issue no.8 (2008), 97-98, http://www.linnean.org/Our-Publications/Other+Publications.
  16. Eisendrath 308.
  17. Gentilcore, 47.
  18. Ibid., 56.
  19. Charles H. Parker, Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400-1800, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 157.
  20. Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters, The Ottoman City Between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 26.