[Ansteorra] period tomatoes

Stefan li Rous StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Fri Jan 21 22:44:01 PST 2005


On Jan 20, 2005, at 12:11 PM, elizabeth at crouchet.com wrote:
>> Please pardon the intrusion, but I received an email today that my gut
>> tells me is full of misconceptions and inaccuracies.
>>
>>>> Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid
>>>> content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing 
>>>> lead poisoning
>>>> and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 
>>>> 400 years or
>>>> so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
> I'll jump in here.
>
> Tomatoes are a member of the Nightshade Family. We all know about 
> "deadly
> Nightshade". The plant, all it's green parts and even the immature 
> fruits are poisonous.
> The cows or other livestock would eat the plants and die and so 
> everyone was
> convinced tomatoes were poisonous, no without reason.
>
> Interestingly, when the fruit matures, just before or as it turns 
> color, the deadly
> compounds are converted and are no longer poisonous. That is why you 
> can eat "fried
> green tomatoes" but you must be careful to select only mature ones. I 
> just wait until they
> turn color.
>
> I also believe that in period tomatoes were yellow not red. They were 
> referred to as
> "golden Apples" or maybe that term came later but certainly before 
> tomatoes were a
> normal part of our cuisine.
>
> So tomatoes as part of a normal diet were quite controversial for a 
> long time. Benjamin
> Franklin spent part of his life convincing people that tomatoes were 
> not poisonous. He
> was apparently successful since the tomato has become a staple in many 
> cuisines
> certainly since that time.
For some more info on the tomato and it use in late period, folks might 
be interested in these Florilegium files in the FOOD-VEGETABLES 
section:
tomato-hist-art   (18K)  2/ 1/99    "You say tomato I say Xitomatl" by 
Lord
                                        Xaviar the Eccentric.
tomatoes-msg      (34K)  1/17/05    Tomatoes in period.
16C-Tomato-art    (16K)  9/ 5/02    "Sixteenth Century Italian and 
Spanish
                                        Tomato References" by Johnnae 
llyn Lewis,
                                        Helewyse de Birkestad, and 
Brighid ni
                                        Chiarain.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****




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