![]() ![]() Push open the swollen glass door and you were embraced by the narcotic perfume of vine peaches, and of ripening tomatoes in their feathery foliage. At this time of year, the hothouse would surrounded with huge fleshy bitter-scented scarlet dahlias and a tangle of tarragon, run wild. I used to know a greenhouse in a walled secret garden. Because today the fragrance of ripe warm tomatoes is as much of a delicacy as the fruit itself. What people objected to most, was the horrible smell. The colour was at first thought amusing for table decoration but tomatoes, it seems, mostly ended up in animal feed. The taste was too sharp and sour for a nation already sky-high on sugar. And the English didn’t take to the novelties at all. In those days carrots were purple, beetroots were yellow and tomatoes were gold. It grew wild all over the South American continent and came to London via Italy and Spain, courtesy of Columbus – maybe! – and the Conquistadors. How the tomatl finished up here is uncertain. We in Britain first wrote the word as ‘tamatah’ or ‘tomata’ – the way many of us still pronounce it. Spookily it’s a member of the nightshade family. ‘Tomatl’ the old Mexica called the luscious-acid berry. It’s hard to imagine it in Pre-Conquest Mexico, served up with marigolds and tuberose on a garnished epergne of human sacrificial flesh. The tomato is such a well-known homely fruit and food-chain-rivet today. ![]() (See also: violent Vikings, the various cakes of King Alfred and Marie Antoinette, or even the very existence of the poor old Dolly Sisters). They could be a figment of a warped cultural imagination. Indeed, despite the occasional voice from the BBC radio archive, many academics now question whether cannibal banquets ever occurred at all. I have never yet assisted at an anthropophagous feast. ![]()
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