The first written record of a tomato in Italy is dated 1544. It took roughly 150 more years before anyone published a recipe for actually eating one.
That gap is the real answer to when tomatoes came to Italy. The plant arrived centuries before it became food.
This guide covers the documented timeline for when tomatoes came to Italy, where the earliest plants actually came from, and why Italians left them alone for so long.
The short version
Tomatoes reached Italy from the Americas by the mid 1500s. The first written description is dated 1544.
For roughly a century and a half afterward, Italians mostly grew tomatoes as curiosities or ornamentals rather than food. Part of that came from suspicion that the plant was poisonous.
The suspicion had a real, if misunderstood, basis. Wealthy households eating off pewter dishes sometimes did get sick after eating tomatoes, but the culprit was lead leaching out of the plate, not the tomato itself.
The first written record: 1544
Pietro Andrea Matthioli, an Italian physician and botanist, gave the earliest documented description of a tomato in 1544. It appeared in his commentary on Dioscorides, a classical Greek herbal text he was translating and annotating.
He described the fruit as flattened like a type of apple, segmented, green at first and golden when ripe. Matthioli never illustrated the plant himself during his lifetime, though later editions of his work eventually included images.
The oldest surviving physical tomato specimens date to shortly after that. Around 1551, tomatoes were pressed and preserved in herbariums in Bologna and Pisa.
One of those, known as the En Tibi herbarium specimen from around 1558, matters more than the others. It is the earliest known preserved sample showing a fully mature fruit.
Where the earliest tomatoes actually came from
Historians studying the earliest European sources have found a genuine dispute in the naming. Some 16th century writers used names tracing to Mexico.
One reference cites the Nahuatl word for tomato, tied directly to Mexico City. Others, including the botanists Michiel and Anguillara, called it the Peruvian apple instead.
Modern historians still debate what that Peruvian label actually meant. It may reflect real trade routes, or it may simply reflect a common assumption at the time that new foods came from Peru.
Genetic testing offers a more definitive answer than the old naming dispute does. DNA analysis of the surviving En Tibi specimen found it was already a fully domesticated tomato.
That specimen turned out genetically close to Mexican landraces, pointing to a Mesoamerican origin for the specific plants that reached Italy.
The 150 year gap: feared, not eaten
Once the tomato arrived, it did not become dinner right away. Many Europeans distrusted the fruit and called it the poison apple.
Part of that fear came from its resemblance to genuinely dangerous nightshade relatives. Tomato leaves, stems, and roots do contain solanine, a real toxin, which gave the suspicion a surface level basis.
The fruit itself was never the actual problem, though. The documented illnesses tell a different story entirely.
Wealthy households of the era commonly ate off pewter plates. Tomatoes are acidic enough to leach lead out of that pewter, and it was the resulting lead poisoning that made some diners sick, not the tomato.
Poorer households eating off wooden or earthenware dishes had no such reaction. That difference is part of why the tomato caught on as food in humbler kitchens well before it reached aristocratic tables.
When Italy actually started eating tomatoes
The written record shifts from botany to cooking in 1692. That year, court steward and cookbook author Antonio Latini published a recipe historians point to as the first printed tomato sauce.
Latini developed it for the Spanish viceroy’s court in Naples. From there, tomato based cooking spread gradually through southern Italy over the following century.
It became closely associated with the country’s cuisine as a whole only much later. The plant that arrived as a suspicious curiosity in 1544 needed roughly a century and a half of gradual trust building before it became a kitchen staple.
For how that same plant eventually made its way into American gardens, see this site’s growing guide at https://knowtomato.com/how-to-grow-tomatoes/.
Frequently asked questions
When did tomatoes first arrive in Italy?
The first written description dates to 1544, from the physician and botanist Pietro Andrea Matthioli. Surviving preserved specimens date to shortly after, around 1551.
Did Italians eat tomatoes right away?
No. For roughly 150 years after tomatoes came to Italy, they were mostly grown as curiosities or ornamentals, with widespread suspicion that the fruit was poisonous.
Why were tomatoes thought to be poisonous?
Their resemblance to genuinely toxic nightshade relatives raised suspicion, and tomato leaves and stems do contain a real toxin called solanine. The actual documented illnesses, though, came from lead leaching out of pewter plates under the fruit’s acidity, not from the tomato itself.
What is the first known tomato recipe from Italy?
Court steward Antonio Latini published a tomato sauce recipe in 1692, developed for the Spanish viceroy’s court in Naples. Historians point to it as the first printed tomato sauce recipe.
Did tomatoes come to Italy from Mexico or Peru?
The genetic and historical evidence points to Mexico. Some 16th century naming conventions referenced Peru instead, but DNA analysis of the earliest surviving specimen shows it was genetically close to Mexican landraces.
Bottom line: the honest answer to when did tomatoes come to Italy is 1544, documented in writing well over a century before anyone published a recipe for eating them. The long gap came from real, if misdirected, suspicion, and the poisoning cases people remember were caused by lead leaching from pewter plates rather than the fruit itself. Once that suspicion faded, starting with Antonio Latini’s 1692 recipe, tomatoes became the ingredient Italian cooking is known for today.
SOURCES
PeerJ: Sixteenth Century Tomatoes in Europe, Who Saw Them, What They Looked Like, and Where They Came From. https://peerj.com/articles/12790/
University of Vermont Extension: A History of Tomatoes. https://www.uvm.edu/extension/news/history-tomatoes