Great Products Mexico
Write: Marichuy Garduño
Photo: Bertha Herrera. @BERTHA HERRERA
El tomato or red tomato it is one of the most important ingredients in world gastronomy. Y Mexico it is their place of origin. From this American country we tell you its story.
Discover the tomato
Its use in the kitchen has become indispensable. It is a highly appreciated food in almost everyone. Of the multiple products that came out of Mexico, along with cocoa, and also that they achieved greater wealth.
The name of the tomato It comes from Nahuatl, xictli, navel and tomatl, tomato (xictómátl). Literally all of this means tomato with navel.
In the text Tomato and Onion, Edited by Herdez Foundation something interesting is explained. In it it is mentioned that, when the first fruits of tomato to the old world, Europeans distrusted. They thought that if they ate them they could be poisoned, since they came from exotic tropical plants. But once convinced of their benefits, they adopted them as their own.
"Italians, perhaps, are the ones who most appreciated the tomato o Red tomato. Upon discovering its versatility and flavor, they named it 'pomodoro', that is, golden apple. In this way they applied the name that does the most justice. Today, countless countries grow it and even export it, giving it the fair value that the tomato »
That is what appears in the cited book, from which we also extract the following:
“Certainly one of the most prized treasures in Mesoamerica was the famous xytamatl. Naming him in our times as the tomato. Always with the pretext that foreigners do not have confusion in this way "
Many towns produced xitomatl, especially in the Central Highlands. From there it was taken to other regions, although from the hands of the Spanish. They found excellent lands to sow it, such as the west and the northwest.
Finally, the historian Hector Bourges Rodríguez adds that the tomato is among the foods that Mesoamerica gifted to humanity.
