Pomodoro!

David Gentilcore

In this entertaining and organic history, David Gentilcore's recounts the surprising rise of the tomato from its New World origins to its Old World status and present significance. From inauspicious beginnings in Renaissance Europe, the tomato came to dominate Italian cuisine and the food industry over the course of three centuries. Gentilcore explores why the tomato took so long to infiltrate Italian cooking and its place in both elite and peasant cultures. He traces its appearance in learned medical and agricultural treatises, travel logs, family recipe books, kitchen accounts, and Italian art, literature, and film. In focusing on Italy's fascination with the tomato, Gentilcore paints a larger portrait of changing trends and habits, starting with botanical practices in the sixteenth century and attitudes toward vegetables in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and moving through to the emergence of factory production in the nineteenth

Tomatoes arrived in Italy in the mid-sixteenth century, but three centuries lapsed before they were commonly consumed in southern Italy. Why did it take so long? David Gentilcore's well-researched and well-written Pomodoro! offers delicious insights into how and why the lowly tomato became Italy's favorite "vegetable fruit." A great story and a great read! -- Andrew F. Smith, author of Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine Frankly, I am amazed that no one had already written this book. It is a fascinating topic, and David Gentilcore does it justice, covering five hundred years in scrutinizing detail. There is probably no food so readily associated with Italy than the tomato, and yet its origin is in the Americas. -- Ken Albala, University of the Pacific, author of Beans: A History

Preface and Acknowledgments1. "Strange and Horrible Things"2. Death by Vegetables3. "They Are to Be Enjoyed"4. Pasta al Pomodoro5. "Authentic Italian Gravy"6. The Autarchical Tomato7. The Tomato ConquestEpilogueBibliographyIndex