Tomato the Great

Tomatoes are an essential component in the modern Iraqi cuisine, as they are indeed in the rest of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean countries. It is not known exactly when tomatoes made their appearance in the Middle East, but broadly speaking that must have happened in the sixteenth century. Tomatoes were brought from Peru or Mexico to Europe after 1522, and the earliest record of their consumption was in Seville in 1608. Cooks at first were reluctant to incorporate tomato into their dishes because they thought it was poisonous, which is understandable given the fact that most of their pots were made of copper, which may be dissolved by the acid in tomatoes. Besides, the tomato was recognized as a member of the solanaceous family (nightshade), which includes the potato, eggplant, mandrake, belladonna, tobacco, and datura. In medieval times this family of plants was associated with toxicity and witchcraft, because some of its members are high in alkaline. By the nineteenth century, however, cooking with tomatoes was well established in the Middle East. Recipes for soups and stews incorporating tomatoes are documented in nineteenth-century Ottoman cookbooks, where once it was called ‘European aubergine’ (Yerasimos).