SC - Deep-fried Turkey? OOP

[Olwen the Odd]

> Pierandrea Mattioli in 1544 is supposed to provide the first European 
> reference to the tomato, and several people claim that he identified 
> the relationship to nightshade and said tomatoes were poisonous. 
> According to Longone (I think) the quote about eating tomatoes fried 
> in oil is also from 1544, which suggests that it is probably from the 
> same source.

That's like saying that anything mentioning sage from 1597 must be from
Gerard.
 
> a. Identified a relationship to nightshade (which eggplant is also related to)
> b. Knew perfectly well that people were eating them and not dying
> c. But for some reason concluded that they weren't good for you--just 
> as Platina asserted that some of the things he gave recipes for were 
> bad for you. 
> Out of that modern writers spun the "tomatoes were considered 
> poisonous because they were related to the deadly nightshade" story.

Logical fallacy: You assume here that it was 'modern writers' and not
simply postperiod readers of Mattioli that said that tomatoes were
poisonous.

There's an interesting quote in the OED:
"1753 CHAMBERS Cycl. Suppl., Tomato, the Portuguese [error] name for the
fruit of the lycopersicon or love-apple; a fruit..eaten
either stewed or raw by the Spaniards and Italians and by the Jew families
in England."

So it was not universally eaten.

The Britannica says: "In France and northern Europe the tomato was at
first grown as an ornamental plant. Since botanists recognized it as a
relative of the poisons belladonna and deadly
 nightshade, it was regarded with suspicion as a food. (The roots and
leaves of the tomato plant are in fact poisonous; they contain the
neurotoxin solanine.)"

My suspicion is that the belief that tomatoes were poisonous may well have
been a superstition common in Northern europe, but not reflected in
scholarly treatises.
 -- 
Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
"I do my job. I refuse to be responsible for other people's managerial 
hallucinations." -- Lady Jemina Starker