[Sca-cooks] Tomatoes??????

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Nov 5, 2005, at 1:56 PM, Caius Fabius wrote:

> I am reading a book of recipes that supposedly recreate  
> Mesopotamian and Egyptian feasts.
> The author had ingredients lists including tomatos and tomato  
> paste.  I had assumed that
> tomatos were a "New World" food, like "Irish Potatos" and "Indian  
> Corn".  Is there any evidence of tomatoes in Egypt or Persia before  
> the 1500's AD?

Most likely what you're seeing are modern recipes similar in some  
respects to foods most likely eaten in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia  
(there are plenty of books that do that for medieval and Renaissance  
Western Europe, too). Many of the basic available foods of these  
areas haven't changed in a long time (which is why some people  
believe the modern versions of the regional cuisines are identical to  
what their ancestors ate thousands of years ago), but a lot of them  
have, and the tomato is almost certainly one of them.

It appears that the tomato was probably introduced to the Near East  
by the Turks, who probably got it from the Portuguese. AFAIK, there's  
no evidence of tomatoes anywhere east of the Greenwich line before  
Columbus, et al.

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

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