When you think of Italian food, what comes to mind? Caprese salad? Lasagna? Margherita pizza? With very few exceptions, it’s likely that the cuisine of the boot immediately makes you think of the tomato — an odd juxtaposition between the modern and historic reality of the cuisine. After all, for centuries, the tomato was associated with its taxonomical group, Solanaceae, also known as the deadly nightshade family, and assumed to be poison. Top photo credit: Tomato image via Shutterstock: Shebeko.
So how did a fruit that made most people wary become one of the most well known ingredients in Italian cuisine, not to mention others throughout Europe? To answer, we have to reach into the past.
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