What is a tomato: is it a fruit or a vegetable? Why did disagreements arise in his classification?
In kindergartens, educators explain to the kids that the sweet fruits growing on trees are fruits. Compotes are cooked from them and delicious desserts are prepared.
And in the beds they grow vegetables. They are put in soups and salads, salted, sour, pickled. It is so simple and logical that there would seem to be nothing to add. But there is still no consensus on the fruits of this plant.
A bit of history
The homeland of a tomato is considered to be South America, where it is still found in a half-wild and wild form. The Indians called it "matl", which means "swollen fruit", and the conquistadors christened it otherwise. The fruits of the first tomatoes they saw were not red, but yellow, and therefore received the name "golden apple", or "pom d'oro".
It is believed that Columbus was the first to bring tomatoes to Europe, and by the middle of the 16th century they began to cultivate them as ornamental plants. They were fond of juicy greens and brilliant bright fruits, but for a long time they were considered poisonous. Only at the beginning of the 19th century did people realize that they were dealing with fruits that were excellent in their taste, from which many dishes and sauces could be made. They began to be sold in the markets and officially ranked among vegetable crops.
But if you look in detail at the structure of tomato fruits and compare it with other vegetables, you will see obvious differences.
What does science say?
Nerds don't ask: “Tomato: is it a fruit or a vegetable?” They are well aware that this is a fleshy, paracarp multi-nest berry. Tomato fruits - tomatoes - develop from the ovary of a flower and have seeds. According to this characteristic, they fall in a row with peaches, apples and oranges. The true vegetables, according to scientists, are leaf lettuce, cabbage and other plants that people eat before they start to ripen their seeds.
Tomato is a fruit!
So the European Union decided in 2001. According to his laws, jams and jams can only be made from fruits, so pumpkins, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, sweet potatoes, rhubarb and ginger got into the company of tomatoes. It turns out that tomato got to the fruit for culinary reasons, and now all European producers can legally make and sell piquant jams from tomatoes with cinnamon, tomato-jam jam and other delights.
Law - what drawbar
Across the ocean, too, there is no consensus. When a customs duty on vegetables was introduced in America in 1887, one of the tomato producers filed a lawsuit against the tax authorities.
He demanded to abolish the duty, since in fact tomato is a fruit.
The Supreme Court of the United States understood this difficult matter. In the question of what to consider a tomato (a fruit or a vegetable) in the distant 1893, an unambiguous decision was made. Without contesting botanical affiliation in the case of import, the court decided to consider the tomato a vegetable. He justified his verdict by the fact that tomatoes, as a rule, are served with dinner, and not for dessert.
How about us?
In Russian cuisine, tomatoes are traditionally used as vegetables, sweet dishes from them are more exotic than ordinary. In domestic agricultural literature, tomato is a vegetable; in everyday life it is also called; in grocery stores, it lies on shelves along with other vegetables.
This juicy and very healthy product has many fans. And it doesn’t matter at all what the tomato actually is: it is a fruit, or a vegetable, or even a berry. Excellent taste and a lot of cooking uses make him a welcome guest on every table.