While today, tomatoes are one of the most commonly consumed vegetables in the United States, that wasn’t always the case. For much of history, tomatoes were not only ignored, but feared. So, what changed? And is it possible a Newport man played a role in introducing the tomato into the American diet?
Episode Description:
While today, tomatoes are one of the most commonly consumed vegetables in the United States, that wasn’t always the case. For much of history, tomatoes were not only ignored, but feared. So, what changed? And is it possible a Newport man played a role in introducing the tomato into the American diet?
Episode Source Material - Michel Felice Corne
Episode Source Material - Tomato History
This story begins in Italy–and later, you’ll find that fitting, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The year was 1799 and the city of Naples was swept up in a revolutionary wave that had started a decade earlier in France. After the French Revolution began, its radical ideas–liberty, equality and the overthrow of monarchy–spread across Europe, carried, in part, by French armies during the Revolutionary Wars. By the late 1790s, France was actively helping to establish “sister republics” in other countries, replacing monarchies with governments modeled on revolutionary ideals.
That’s exactly what happened in Naples. At the time, the Kingdom of Naples was ruled by the Bourbon King Ferdinand IV, but in January of 1799, French forces captured the city and Ferdinand was forced to flee to Sicily. The French established a government called the Parthenopean Republic, which was run by local elites and supported by French troops. But the Republic would be short-lived. A counter-revolution rose up in an effort to restore the monarchy, and–as the story goes–a man named Michel Felice Corne was drafted into the Neapolitan army that would help fight against the French occupation of the city. This is our main character, the unexpected star of an unusual story. For six months, Corne fought and rose to the rank of captain, and the Neapolitan troops reduced the French to a final stronghold. And in June 1799, control of Naples was restored under King Ferdinand IV.
The months following the conflict were brutal for anyone who had supported the Parthenopean Republic, and many intellectuals, elites, artists and reformers were imprisoned, exiled or executed. And though, as histories suggest, Michel Felice Corne was on the winning side of the battle, he might have felt himself at risk–with his name, which sounds like a curious blend of French and Italian influences, and his accent and bearing which an acquaintance would later describe as “so elegant and courtly that he seemed a French count in disguise,” and his family, which was apparently of noble origins. So Corne sought refuge on a ship called the Mount Vernon, which was headed for Salem, MA.
That voyage would shape Michel Felice Corne’s career and his legacy. He began painting scenes of the Mount Vernon, the ship that would carry him to a new life. And in America, he would make a name for himself as a prominent maritime painter. Throughout his lifetime, he’d feature the ship in over a dozen pieces of art. But during that months-long journey from Italy to America, Corne carried with him not just brushes and pigments, but also a revolutionary idea—one that many Americans of the time would have found unthinkable. He believed that the tomato, widely feared as a poisonous ornamental plant, was not only safe to eat... but incredibly delicious. And that conviction would place Corne at the center of a new, quieter revolution–one not of politics or war, but a revolution of the American diet.
I’m Sara and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each episode, I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And this week, you might be surprised to learn that while today, tomatoes are one of the most commonly consumed vegetables in the United States, that wasn’t always the case. In fact, at one point tomatoes were not only ignored, but feared. And I learned this story because of an unassuming little plaque on a house in Newport that reads: “Corne House: Home of the artist Michel Felice Corne who introduced the tomato into this country.”
Fear of the Tomato
Odds are you know someone who hates tomatoes. You might even be that someone. Depending on the variety and the size, tomatoes can be squishy and wet, the whole plant is pungent, the flavor is savory and acidic. They’re definitely unusual, hence that weird position they occupy between being a fruit but being classified, culinarily, as a vegetable. But even if the idea of eating a cherry tomato on a salad or a big juicy slice of tomato on a burger kind of grosses you out, you probably like pizza, right? Or pasta with tomato sauce? Or ketchup? Some of the most iconic American meals wouldn’t be complete without tomatoes, which is why they rank amongst the most popular vegetables in America, up there with potatoes and onions. And each year, the average American eats almost 20 pounds of fresh tomatoes.
But those of you who feel squeamish at the idea of taking a bite of a plump Roma as though it were an apple will feel justified to learn that tomatoes were not always so well loved. Before making their way into European and American culinary tradition, they acquired the stigma of being unhealthy, smelly and strange. In 1581, a Flemish herbalist warned: “The strong, stinking smell gives one sufficient notice how unhealthful and evil they are to eat.” Over 200 years later, the idea held when the American horticulturist described the “odious and repellent smelling berries,” and another critic, “Hardly two persons in a hundred on first tasting it thought that they would ever be induced to taste that sour trash a second time.” Some even called the tomato the Poison Apple, believing that it was responsible for sickening European aristocrats who were among the few to have tomatoes in early days. So.. what changed? How did the tomato make the massive leap from being loathed and mistrusted to a central ingredient in our cuisine?
Tomato history (South America to Europe)
To understand the evolution of our relationship with tomatoes, we have to go back to the beginning. You might assume tomatoes are Italian, because they’re so associated with Italian food, but they’re actually originally from the coastal highlands of western South America. Wild tomato plants can still be found in Peru, Ecuador and northern Chile today. These tomatoes are tiny, even smaller than cherry tomatoes, about the size of a shelled pea. And they‘re apparently quite sweet. But we don’t eat wild tomatoes–we eat domesticated ones. And tomatoes were likely first domesticated in Mexico where they may have been a late-ish addition to Central American cuisine, and were likely adopted there because of their similarity to the tomatillo, a distant cousin of the tomato which was native to the Mexican highlands.
After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in 1521, a Franciscan friar wrote of how the Aztecs cultivated a great variety of tomatoes of many sizes, shapes and colors. That little, wild tomato had changed through the process of domestication. Today, some modern cultivars produce fruit a thousand times larger than their wild counterparts. And while it was clearly okay to eat tomatoes, the Aztecs were using them to flavor soups, they were frying them with peppers, chopping them up with chiles and herbs to make salsa, that news didn’t exactly make it back to Europe with the first tomatoes that were presented as curiosities to European nobles and intrigued naturalists. That’s partly because that Franciscan friar’s detailed account of his time living in Tenochtitlan was not widely shared, as his point of view was perceived by the Spanish as a little too sympathetic towards the Aztecs.
While the tomato likely first entered Europe through the Spanish port of Seville, it quickly made its way to Italy, where Renaissance naturalists took an interest in the strange new fruit. And, by the way, the Italians did in fact correctly classify it as a fruit originally. And this fruit would have looked a little different from the mainstream tomatoes of today. It was likely ribbed like a bell pepper, not smooth, and the earliest accounts were of yellow tomatoes. Like the 1544 account written by Italian herbalist Pietro Andrea Matthioli, perhaps the earliest description of a tomato in Europe. He spoke of a species of nightshade that had recently arrived in Italy which was “flattened like the mele rose” (a type of apple) and segmented, green at first though it ripened into a golden color. Not long after, this fruit would become known as the mala aureau, or golden apple in Latin. Apple was kind of a generic term for various fruits. In Italian, golden apple translates to pomi d’oro. Or, today, pomodoro.
Unlike other New World crops—like corn (which was used for polenta), beans (simmered in soups), tobacco, and potatoes—the tomato was slower to gain acceptance in the European diet. One reason might lie in the very spirit of the Renaissance itself: a revival of ancient knowledge.
Renaissance scholars returned to classical texts, including the writings of Galen of Pergamon, a Greco-Roman physician who shaped much of early medical thought. Galen believed health depended on the balance of four bodily humors: Blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. He also classified foods on a scale from wet to dry and hot to cold. And he thought that by adjusting your diet, you could affect your health and disposition. For example, for a runny nose, you might be wise to eat something hot and dry to counteract the phlegm.
Tomatoes, seen as cold and wet, were considered harmful by Renaissance herbalists and were believed to hinder digestion. Some even thought the tomato might be this mythical “Wolf Peach” described by Galen, a lost poisonous fruit with strong-smelling yellow juice and a ribbed surface. I mean, the description kind of syncs up. But, today, we know that tomatoes would not have been present in ancient Greece and Rome. However, the poor maligned fruit never shook this association—today, its Latin name is Solanum Lycopersicum, literally “wolf peach.”
While tomatoes began to appear in herbal textbooks, they didn’t appear in Italian cookbooks for nearly 150 years after their introduction. The first known recipe, dated to 1694, was for salsa. But it wouldn’t be until the mid-1700s that these tomato recipes became a little more common, particularly in southern Italy, which was largely poor. There, the tomato gradually became a staple of the mostly vegetarian diet. And by the early 1800s, southern Italy was tomato country.
Tomatoes were even slower to gain acceptance in England than in Italy and Spain. There, the new fruit was known as the “love apple”—perhaps influenced by the French, who called it the pomme d’amour—which could have been a mis-hearing of the name pomi d’oro or may have alluded to an association with the mandrake fruit, which was thought to be an aphrodisiac. The “love apple” was mostly grown as an ornamental plant in gardens or as a medicinal plant–the fruit, its oils, and its leaves were used in poultices for headaches and gout, for burns, and even as a treatment meant to soothe "vapors" in women. For some time, the fruit remained a curiosity—sometimes finding its way into soups, but broadly viewed with suspicion. It wasn’t until the late 1700s that tomatoes became more widely accepted in England, with tomato sauce and stewed tomatoes showing up regularly in English kitchens. The term “tomato” caught on at about the same time, replacing “love apple” as its popularity grew.
The Arrival of the Tomato in America
This brings to about the time when our friend Michel Felice Corne would have been making that trans-Atlantic voyage from Naples, Italy to Salem, MA in the recently formed United States. Coming from southern Italy, which (in 1800) had recently embraced the vibrant tomato into its largely vegetarian diet, Corne might have been surprised to find that his new friends in Salem were not as well acquainted with the squishy, fragrant fruit.
Because many colonists migrated to America before tomatoes became a common culinary ingredient, very few knew much about cooking with them. Nor did they want to. Tomatoes did not have a great reputation in America where they were believed, by some, to be poisonous and by others to be kind of disgusting. The Horticulturalist (magazine) described tomatoes as “odious and repellent-smelling berries,” meanwhile in 1834, the editor of the Boston Courier described them as the “fungus of an offensive plant which one cannot touch without an immediate application of soap and water.”
But they were here, having arrived via a circuitous journey from Central America to Europe and then back across the Atlantic to the colonies. There were early accounts of tomatoes being grown in the Carolinas, having possibly been introduced by the Spanish or maybe by French Huguenot refugees or British colonists, or maybe via the Caribbean, or possibly via slaves who had cooked with tomatoes before coming to America. As you can see, there’s no real consensus. There was also evidence that tomatoes were eaten in Florida in the mid-1700s, in Georgia in the late 1700s, and in Alabama in the early 1800s but these accounts likely exist because they were odd.
As it was when Michel Felice Corne planted tomatoes in Salem and then went on to eat them. In 1802, the Reverend William Bentley, pastor of the East Church in Salem, wrote in his diary: “Mr. Corne is endeavoring to introduce the tomatoes, love apples, pomme d’amour, or his favorite Italian pomo d’oro. He finds it difficult to persuade us even to taste of it, after all his praise.”
Eventually, Corne would move from Salem to Boston (where similar accounts of the tomato would appear) and then to Newport where he built a quiet but colorful life rooted in food, friendship, and community. He converted a stable into a home, ran a small confectionery shop with a young companion named Billy Bottomore, who he had become close with in Boston. He delighted the neighborhood children with old songs and stories. And he became known for his cooking: For his soups, his marmalades, his macaroni, and—of course—for his tomatoes, which he famously claimed thrived in Newport’s climate.
Today, his home still stands on the corner of a street which bears his name, and a small plaque memorializes his introduction of the tomato into this country. But, the truth is, Corne was not the singular hero of the tomato’s American debut—but rather, one of many individuals who advocated its virtues in their own communities. His story–in Newport, in Boston, and in Salem–was echoed elsewhere throughout America.
Author and historian Andrew F. Smith claims “there are more that 500 tomato introduction stories, mostly taking a “great man approach” as he puts it, crediting a particular individual, usually a male, with introducing the tomato into America or a particular region. One of the other most famous accounts is that of Robert Gibbon Johnson, who was said to have eaten a basket of tomatoes on the courthouse steps in Salem, NJ to demonstrate that the fruit was not poisonous. Today, this story is believed to be largely apocryphal, though Johnson was a well-known horticulturalist. There are also stories suggesting Thomas Jefferson ate the first tomato or maybe knew the person who ate the first tomato. These stories were kind of all over. But, still, for decades, the tomato remained a curiosity—cultivated more often than consumed, and eyed with suspicion by a public raised on old-world warnings.
The Tomato as Medicine
The real turning point in the tomato’s national reputation would come down to a collision of events and trends: a pandemic, a rising obsession with health reform, and the influence of skilled snake oil salesmen.
In the early 1800s, a cholera epidemic ravaged global communities, resulting in more deaths than any other epidemic disease of the time. As the illness reached America in 1832, it sparked widespread panic and an obsession with health and hygiene that really found its footing in a society that was already beginning to toy with early ideas of health and wellness reform that included concepts like vegetarianism and temperance, even the idea of more frequent bathing. With a novel focus on nutrition sweeping the country, Dr. John Cook Bennet, began lecturing on the health benefits of tomatoes. He argued that not only were tomatoes not poisonous, they were incredibly good for you. He claimed they could be used to treat dyspepsia and diarrhea.. And, perhaps most significantly, he claimed that eating tomatoes would make a person “much less liable to an attack of cholera.. And would in the majority of cases prevent it.” Most of what Bennet claimed was scientifically not very valid, but people.. Literally.. Ate it up. His ideas were reprinted in hundreds of articles in newspapers around the country, and those articles were often followed by recipes. If any one individual deserves credit for popularizing the tomato in America, this may be the guy.
Bennet got people cooking with tomatoes, but shortly afterwards a handful of clever, or devious, salesmen turned the fruit into actual medicine. Two of the most famous were Dr. Miles’ Compound Extract of Tomato pills and his competitor Phelp’s Compound Tomato pills. These pills were said to address almost everything, ranging from the common cold to bilious fever, inflammation of the head or chest, rheumatism, pleurisy, dyspepsia, syphilis and scrofula. But in reality, the pills might have worked more like a laxative. Producers established a network of agents, wholesalers and retailers and they advertised in newspapers throughout the country. Today, over 6K advertisements for tomato pills have been located, and it’s believed those are only a fraction of what was published. And demand was immediate. In 1837, Archibald Miles had to close up shop when he ran flat out of ingredients. And in 1838, publisher and politician Jesse Buel announced there was so much press about the tomato, that if it were to be believed, tomato medicine was an infallible cure for almost all diseases man was heir to. While most of the claims were false, the truth is that tomato pills might have done America some good. They replaced calomel, a popular laxative that was actually quite toxic. And they were a major contributor to what became known as Tomato Mania.
But seemingly as soon as it started, the hype fizzled out. The market became increasingly competitive, tomato pill manufacturers were publicly fighting one another, the reputation of the pills went down the drain, and the cholera epidemic tapered off. But the effects of Tomato Mania continued on.
Because it wasn’t just the medical claims that made tomatoes popular. During the 1830s, alongside ads for pills there were also many recipes. And Americans grew to love the once-loathed plant which was easy to grow in most states and in many different kinds of soil. By 1858, one seed salesman wrote: “In taking retrospect of the past eighteen years, there is no vegetable in the catalogue that has obtained such popularity in so short a period. In 1828-29 it was almost detested; in ten years most every variety of pill and panacea was extracted as tomato. It now occupies as great a surface of ground as cabbage and is cultivated the length and breadth of the country.”
The tomato’s rise didn’t stop there. The Civil War helped the tomato go from an agricultural hit to an industrial staple. Thanks to advances in bottling and canning, armies were able to travel with more food and tomatoes were among the first vegetables preserved commercially. Soldiers on both sides were introduced to canned tomatoes as a portable, storable ration. After the war, veterans returned home with a taste for them, helping fuel the postwar boom in tomato canning that saw hundreds of local canneries spring up across the country. By 1870, tomatoes were among the big three canned vegetables, along with peas and corn. And while the earliest tomato ketchup recipe appeared in 1812, commercial ketchups took off after the war because ketchup was a great use of the rotten, diseased or insect-ridden tomato slop discarded during the process of canning. Sounds appealing, right? By 1896, the NY Tribune proclaimed that tomato ketchup was the national condiment and was available on every table in the land. And before Heinz stole the market and the hearts of America, some 800 different ketchup brands were available for sale.
I could go on and on about tomatoes: I could talk about Campbells or Heinz or the meteoric rise of pizza. I’m absolutely fascinated by the histories of fruits and vegetables that we interact with every day and, for the most part, take for granted. But there is one more piece of the story worth mentioning, and you’ve likely been thinking about it while I’ve been talking–and that’s the fruit or vegetable controversy.
At this point, most of us probably already know that the tomato is in fact a fruit, not a vegetable. But if you’ve been calling them vegetables your whole life and you aren’t prepared to change, you might be heartened to hear that the Supreme Court backs you up on that.
During the Civil War, northern tomato sellers (who had previously relied on growers in the south for the off-season produce) began working with farmers in Bermuda and the Bahamas instead. After the war, Congress passed tariffs to protect American growers, and these tariffs specified duties on imported vegetables but excluded “fruits, green, ripe or dried.” In spring of 1886, importer John Nix received shipments of tomatoes and (thinking he was pretty clever) he refused to pay the tariffs, claiming that tomatoes were actually a fruit. When the tariff collector forced him to pay, Nix sued.
In 1893, the case reached the Supreme Court who, surprisingly, sided with the duty collector stating: “Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruits of a vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in the common language of the people, whether sellers or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables, which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, whether eaten cooked or raw are, like potatoes, celery, and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with or after the soup, fish or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not, like fruits generally as dessert.”
So, you do you. Call them a fruit or a vegetable or whatever you want. I used the terms interchangeably throughout, which is messy. But we humans make things messy. It’s kind of what we’re good at.
Closing
So, to wrap things up, maybe Michel Felice Corne wasn’t the singular person who introduced the tomato into this country. The truth is both more humble and, in some ways, more interesting. He wasn’t a revolutionary—he was a neighbor. He quietly grew tomatoes in his backyard, shared them with his community, and helped normalize a food that many Americans still feared or dismissed. And today, that community continues to memorialize him. His story reminds us that you don’t have to spark a national movement to make a lasting impact. Sometimes, it's enough to change minds on your own street—to be the person who brings something new to the table and says, “Here, try this.”
Thank you so much for listening. This episode was written and researched by me, Sara Corben Harwood. If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could share it with your family or friends, or you can send me a note at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com or on IG at Weird Island Podcast. See you next time as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island.