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Mexican X Part IV: You Say “Tomato,” I Say You’re Missing a Syllable, Bro!
Tomatoes are freaking everywhere in global cuisine. It’s almost impossible to imagine life (pizza!) without the fat, red, dimpled spheres.
Weird thing is, we got the name wrong.
Ready to learn why? It’s all about the “x,” of course!
It’s no secret (I hope) that “tomato” comes from Spanish “tomate,” which in turn comes from a Nahuatl word: “tomatl.” This berry of the nightshade Solanum lycopersicum was bred by Mesoamerican farmers over millennia till it reached its present big redness.
But wait! The Nahua peoples enjoyed lots of different sorts of “tomatoes,” all with different names: cōātomatl (snake tomato), coyōtomatl (coyote tomato), izhuatomatl (husk tomato), and so on. That last category contained what we now call “cherry tomatoes” and “tomatillos.” Small things.
And here’s the rub. The small, green, husk-enveloped fruit we call “tomatillos”? Those are “tomatl” in Nahuatl. We should be calling them “tomatoes” in English.
The big, fat, red or yellow ones? Those were known as “xītomatl.”
“So what happened, David?” I can hear you wondering. “What happened to the ‘x’?”
