After consuming about a half-dozen different takes on the fried green tomato, I was (aside from full) rather was curious about their history. I wondered, who had the forethought to fry these unripened beauties? I had thought they were a Southern staple but my research was a bit sketchy, and I wanted to be sure so I called my friend Andrew Smith, a culinary historian who is the author of books like the Oxford Companion to American Food and the upcoming Andrew F. Smith, Hamburger: A Global History (London: Reaktion Books, 2008).
Turns out, I was wrong. Fried green tomatoes, Andy told me, were actually an early 19th century invention of Northern farmers. The Southern origin of the fried green tomatoes is a myth. “During the early 19th century farmers in the North were plagued by leftover tomatoes that had to be cleared off the vines before the first frost,” he explained. “They couldn’t eat them raw, so they fried them.” The long story was published in an article he wrote:
“In Northern climates, usually large numbers of unripe, green tomatoes remained on the vine when the first frost hit. As little was wasted in 19th century rural America, the green tomatoes were preserved as pickles, and used in ketchups, sauces and pies. Green tomatoes were also served to cows and pigs; and the juice was used as a dye. The first published reference to frying green tomatoes appeared in an 1835 issue of the New England Farmer, which reported that they should be sliced, like apples, and fried in butter….The first recipe for frying green tomatoes is credited to John Cowan, in his What to Eat and How to Cook It (New York, 1870).”
Based upon my research to date, here's my best inferences on the true history:
By all accounts, they entered the American culinary scene in the Northeast and Midwest, perhaps with a link to Jewish immigrants, and from there moved onto the menu of the home-economics school of cooking teachers who flourished in the United States in the early-to-mid 20th century.
A recipe for "Fried Green Tomatoes" appears in the International Jewish Cookbook (1919), recommended as "an excellent breakfast dish," and in Aunt Babette's Cookbook (1889), another kosher Jewish recipe book. Recipes for "fried tomatoes" (though not necessarily green ones) appear in several Midwestern cookbooks from the late 19th Century, including the Buckeye Cookbook (1877) and The Presbyterian Cookbook (1873) from the First Presbyterian Church of Dayton, OH. By the early part of the 20th Century, recipes for fried green tomatoes were appearing regularly in newspapers throughout the northeast and midwest, usually in cooking columns that were widely syndicated and often as part of canned pieces that offered to layout for a homemaker a complete week's menu (breakfast, lunch, and dinner).
« Return to the thread "Tomato Recipes!"
« Return to Vegetables and Fruit forum
« Return to the Garden.org homepage
