48 Fun Facts About Tomato

Botanically, what kind of fruit is a tomato?

A berry, botanically, is a fleshy fruit grown from the ovary of a single flower with its seeds in the pulp, so tomatoes, grapes and bananas qualify, while strawberries and raspberries do not.

The tomato belongs to which plant family, alongside tobacco, petunias and chili peppers?

Nightshade relatives include deadly nightshade and mandrake, so botanists in northern Europe long distrusted the tomato as food and grew it mainly as an ornamental.

From which language does the word 'tomato' ultimately come?

Nahuatl, the Aztec language, gave Spanish 'tomate' from 'tomatl'; in Mexico the red fruit is also called jitomate, from 'xitomatl', and plain 'tomate' can mean the green tomatillo.

The wild ancestor of the tomato, Solanum pimpinellifolium, is native to which region?

Western South America is home to the currant-sized wild species, mainly in Peru and Ecuador, yet the tomato is thought to have been domesticated far to the north, in Mexico.

Which conquistador's 1521 capture of Tenochtitlan set the tomato on its way to Europe?

Hernán Cortés took the Aztec capital in 1521; within a generation Spaniards were growing tomatoes at home, and they carried the plant on to the Caribbean and the Philippines.

The Italian word for tomato, pomodoro, comes from a 16th-century name that literally meant what?

Golden apple, or pomo d'oro, is the name Pietro Andrea Mattioli printed in 1554, which has led to speculation that the first tomatoes seen in Italy were yellow.

Bread rubbed with ripe tomato and olive oil is the signature snack of which Spanish region?

Catalonia claims pa amb tomàquet as its own; one food historian traces it to farm kitchens, where a glut of ripe tomatoes was used to soften bread that had gone hard.

The earliest known cookbook with tomato recipes was published in 1692 in which city?

Naples was under Spanish rule when Antonio Latini, steward to the viceroy's first minister, printed a tomato sauce 'in the Spanish style' there, a sign the recipes had come from Spain.

The San Marzano tomato is grown near which volcano?

Vesuvius looms over San Marzano sul Sarno, where this long, pointed tomato was first grown in volcanic soil; its thick, sweet flesh and few seeds make it a favourite for pizza sauce.

Tomato, mozzarella and basil top which classic pizza?

Margherita: legend says pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito made it for Queen Margherita of Savoy in 1889, its tomato, mozzarella and basil echoing the red, white and green of Italy's flag.

The Supreme Court's 1893 ruling that tomatoes are vegetables settled a dispute over what?

Import tariffs: the 1883 Tariff Act taxed imported vegetables but not fruit, so the Nix family sued New York's customs collector to recover duties on Caribbean tomatoes, and lost unanimously.

Which food is about 95 percent water, like a raw tomato?

Cucumber and raw tomato are both about 95 percent water, against roughly 86 percent for an apple, which is why 100 grams of tomato has only 18 calories.

Which pigment gives ripe tomatoes their red colour?

Lycopene, a red carotenoid, colours ripe tomatoes; unusually, cooking breaks down cell walls and makes more of it available for the body to absorb.

Which gas, released by the fruit itself, triggers tomato ripening?

Ethylene, a gaseous plant hormone the fruit produces, triggers ripening; commercial green tomatoes are gassed with it, and a paper bag traps it to ripen tomatoes at home.

Which country grew the most tomatoes in 2023, roughly a third of the world's crop?

China grew roughly a third of the world's 2023 tomato crop, far ahead of India and Turkey, although the tomato is not native to Asia at all.

Sliced tomato, mozzarella and basil make up which salad named after an Italian island?

Caprese takes its name from Capri; its red, white and green are often said to salute the Italian flag, though the dish may not have begun on the island at all.

Which US state made the tomato its official fruit in 2009 and tomato juice its official beverage in 1965?

Ohio made tomato juice its official beverage in 1965 and the tomato its state fruit in 2009; at Reynoldsburg, seedsman Alexander Livingston had bred the Paragon of 1870 and other varieties that made it a commercial crop.

Which state made its Vine Ripe Pink Tomato both state fruit and state vegetable in one law?

Arkansas designated the South Arkansas Vine Ripe Pink Tomato its official fruit and official vegetable in 1987, citing both the botanical and the culinary classification.

Which tomato, cleared for sale in 1994, was the first commercially grown genetically engineered food?

Flavr Savr was judged by the FDA in May 1994 to be as safe as ordinary tomatoes, but it cost far more to grow than it sold for and was gone from the shops by 1997.

Which agrochemical giant bought Calgene, maker of the first genetically modified tomato, in 1997?

Monsanto paid more than $200 million for the rest of Calgene in 1997, after the mounting costs of its pioneering tomato had kept the smaller firm from turning a profit.

Which tomato cultivar had its complete genome published in Nature in 2012?

Heinz 1706, an inbred processing tomato, supplied the reference genome; it revealed two ancient triplications of the whole genome that helped shape fruit traits such as colour and fleshiness.

What did the 'u' mutation behind uniformly red modern tomatoes cost the fruit?

Sweetness and flavour suffered because the mutation switches off a gene that builds chlorophyll in the young fruit, so it makes less sugar; breeders had picked it for evenly red tomatoes with no green shoulders.

Whose 1753 decision to class the tomato in the genus Solanum was eventually vindicated by genetic studies?

Carl Linnaeus placed the tomato in Solanum; Philip Miller soon moved it to a genus of its own, Lycopersicon, but genetic evidence sent it back, so botanists again call it Solanum lycopersicum.

Which vegetable do genome studies place closest to the tomato on the family tree?

Potato and tomato form a tight branch within the genus Solanum, and a 2025 genome study suggests the potato line itself arose when an ancient tomato relative hybridised with another species.

Which insects are cultured in greenhouses to pollinate tomatoes?

Bumblebees buzz-pollinate, vibrating their flight muscles to shake pollen loose, which tomato flowers need; before hives were sold commercially in the late 1980s, growers vibrated plants by hand.

Handling which product can spread a common virus to tomato plants?

Cigarettes can carry tobacco mosaic virus, which survives curing; smokers' hands pass it to tomato plants, mottling and wrinkling the leaves, since tomato and tobacco are close relatives.

Which thick-walled tomato type, favoured for paste and sauces, has few small seed cavities?

Plum tomatoes include the Roma, which despite its Italian name was bred by US government scientists in Maryland in the 1950s to resist a wilt disease.

What is the term for old open-pollinated tomato varieties such as Brandywine and Cherokee Purple?

Heirloom varieties breed true from saved seed, unlike hybrids, so families could hand them down for generations; British growers call them heritage tomatoes.

Which growing method gives California's Early Girl tomatoes an unusually concentrated flavour?

Dry-farming means no watering after transplanting, which forces roots deep in search of moisture and concentrates the flavour; the tomatoes are a farmers'-market favourite around San Francisco.

La Tomatina, the giant tomato fight, takes place in which Spanish town?

Buñol has staged the fight since the 1940s; it was banned in the early 1950s until townsfolk paraded a giant tomato in a coffin in 1957 and the authorities relented.

By tradition, what prize must revellers knock off a greased pole before La Tomatina's tomato fight begins?

A ham tops the soaped pole, the 'palo jabón'; climbers scramble over one another while the crowd is hosed with water, and by custom the tomato trucks wait for the ham to drop.

La Tomatina is held on the last Wednesday of which month?

August: the fight is traced to the last Wednesday of August 1945, when youngsters scuffling at a parade of giant-headed figures grabbed tomatoes from a market stall and began throwing.

Which classic cocktail is built on vodka and tomato juice?

Bloody Mary, as bartender Fernand Petiot told it, was just vodka and tomato juice until he added salt, pepper, cayenne, lemon and Worcestershire sauce.

Harry's New York Bar, which claims the 1921 invention of the vodka-and-tomato-juice cocktail, is in which city?

Paris is home to Harry's New York Bar, where bartender Fernand Petiot is said to have first mixed the drink in 1921 before taking it to Manhattan's St. Regis hotel in the 1930s.

Which company, famous for its tomato soup, hired the chemist who invented condensed soup in 1897?

Campbell chemist John T. Dorrance found a way to condense soup by halving its heaviest ingredient, water; Andy Warhol's 1962 Campbell's Soup Cans later turned the label into pop art.

Early ketchups were made from what, before tomatoes took over?

Mushrooms, walnuts and oysters were the base of early British ketchups; the first known tomato recipe was published only in 1812, and one from 1817 still called for anchovies.

Ketchup is famously hard to pour because it is what kind of fluid?

Non-Newtonian: ketchup's viscosity falls under stress (shear-thinning), so it sits stubbornly until a shake or a firm squeeze suddenly sends it flowing.

Which 1824 cookbook by Jefferson's cousin Mary Randolph printed a tomato ketchup recipe?

The Virginia Housewife came from a seasoned hostess: once wealthy, Mary Randolph had kept a Richmond boarding house after her husband lost his government post.

Which ketchup maker began in 1869 by bottling horseradish?

Heinz began with horseradish in 1869, went bankrupt in 1875, then started again the next year with a new product: the tomato ketchup that made its name.

EZ Squirt, the kids' ketchup launched in 2000, first came in which unexpected colour?

Green came first, in 2000, and proved such a hit with children that purple, pink, orange, teal and blue followed, before the whole range was dropped in 2006.

Which real on-set accident was written into the 1978 spoof Attack of the Killer Tomatoes?

Helicopter crash: the rented chopper went down with the cameras rolling, nobody was badly hurt, and the footage stayed in the film, with added dialogue blaming a 'kamikaze tomato'.

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) is set in which fictional Alabama town's cafe?

Whistle Stop's cafe was modelled on the real Irondale Cafe in Alabama, run for decades by a relative of author Fannie Flagg, who co-wrote the film from her own 1987 novel.

Which cold Spanish tomato soup is served in hot weather?

Gazpacho is older than its star ingredient: a soup of bread, garlic, oil and vinegar may date back to Roman times, and tomatoes joined only after they reached Spain from the Americas.

Where did a single 'tomato tree' vine yield a record 32,000 tomatoes in one year?

Disney World's greenhouses at Epcot are a working farm inside a theme park: the fruit and vegetables grown there are served in the park's own restaurants.

Which taste, also strong in Parmesan and soy sauce, do ripe tomatoes bring to a dish?

Umami, the savoury taste a Tokyo chemist traced to glutamate in 1908, runs high in ripe tomatoes, which is why they deepen sauces, soups and stews.

Blossom-end rot, the dark patch on a tomato's base, stems from a shortage of which nutrient?

Calcium: blossom-end rot appears when the growing fruit cannot draw enough calcium, usually because irregular watering disrupts uptake, so it is more often a watering problem than a soil deficiency.

What does lycopersicum, the tomato's species name first used by the ancient physician Galen, mean?

Wolf peach: from Greek lykos (wolf) and persikon (peach); Galen's plant has never been identified, and a 16th-century Italian botanist merely guessed it might be the tomato.

The Chinese name for the tomato, fānqié, literally means what?

Foreign eggplant: 番 (fān) marks things that came from abroad and 茄 (qié) is the eggplant, a relative; the tomato probably reached China through the Philippines or Macau.