Amazing Fact About Tomatoes

There were no tomatoes in Italian food, peanuts in Thai food, or chili peppers in Indian food in the year 1450.

When you think of Italian food, one of the first things that probably comes to mind is tomato sauce. Thai peanut sauce is recognized around the world, as is the spiciness of Indian food which comes from chili peppers. Yet when Columbus set forth westward from Europe, none of these things would have been part of the recipe. 

Tomatoes, peanuts and chili peppers are all native to the Americas and so were unknown in the Old World prior to Columbus’ voyages. Tomatoes were originally domesticated in Peru and spread from there to Mexico. Peanuts were also domesticated in the Amazon, while chili peppers appear to have been domesticated separately in both South and Central America. All three were important crops to many cultures in the New World thousands of years before Europeans had ever heard of them.

Many other important food crops have an American lineage, including squash, corn, avocado, chocolate, and many varieties of beans. Even the so-called “Irish potato” was unknown in Europe before the fifteenth century. It was actually domesticated in the Andean highlands of Bolivia and Peru.