His Majesty the Tomato: its history, from South America to the Italian kitchen

Today it's hard to imagine Italian cooking without tomatoes, yet for almost two centuries after they reached Europe hardly anyone ate them. The tomato came late to the Italian kitchen: pasta with tomato sauce as we know it is little more than two hundred years old.

From the Andes to Mexico

The wild species of tomato come from the Andean region of South America, between Peru and Ecuador. But it was in Mesoamerica, in what is now Mexico, that local peoples cultivated it and used it in their cooking. The name itself comes from the Nahuatl word tomatl.

Arrival in Europe and the “pomi d'oro”

The tomato reached Europe in the sixteenth century with the Spanish. In Italy the first to describe it was the physician and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli, who in 1544 wrote of fruits that turn “the colour of gold”, and in the 1554 edition used the name pomi d'oro – golden apples: hence the Italian pomodoro. The first known fruits were probably yellow.

For a long time it was grown mainly as an ornamental plant and in botanical gardens: it belonged to the same family as mandrake and deadly nightshade, and that was enough to make it suspect.

Southern Italy and the birth of tomato sauce

The tomato truly entered the kitchen in the Kingdom of Naples. One of the first recipes for a “salsa di pomodoro alla spagnuola” – Spanish-style tomato sauce – appears in the recipe book of the cook Antonio Latini, Lo scalco alla moderna, published in Naples at the end of the seventeenth century. Over the course of the nineteenth century tomatoes and pasta came together, and sugo became the everyday dish of the South.

Alongside the tomato came the preserves: the passata and sauce made at home at the end of summer, tomatoes dried in the sun on cane racks and then packed in oil, and tomato concentrate. They were the way to have tomatoes all year round.

Tomatoes in our preserves

Two of our jars come straight from this tradition:

• Sugo Cilentano: peeled tomatoes in their own juice, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, salt and oregano, cooked under vacuum at low temperature. 270 g jar.
• Sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil: dried in the sun on wooden racks and packed in extra virgin olive oil with capers and garlic. 200 g jar.

From our range Sugo Cilentano Peeled tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, oregano. 270 g. € 5,00 Discover → or build your own box

From our range Sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil Sun-dried, with capers and garlic. 200 g. € 7,90 Discover → or build your own box

Once opened, keep them in the fridge and eat within 7 days.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the tomato come from?

The wild species come from the Andean region of South America; the tomato was domesticated and cultivated in Mesoamerica, today's Mexico, and from there it reached Europe in the sixteenth century.

Why is it called pomodoro in Italian?

From pomo d'oro, “golden apple”, the name used in the mid-sixteenth century by the botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli for the first fruits to arrive in Italy, which were probably yellow.

When did people start eating pasta with tomato sauce?

The tomato found its way into Neapolitan recipes between the late seventeenth and the eighteenth century; its lasting partnership with pasta came in the nineteenth century.

All our sauces: Ready-made sauces.