Where does this come from, and can I check it?

The fruit was grown in Mexico and Peru long before Italian cooks saw it. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a food fact?

Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Tomatoes only reached Europe after 1492

The fruit was grown in Mexico and Peru long before Italian cooks saw it Tomatoes descend from wild nightshades in the Andes and were domesticated in Mesoamerica, where they were eaten with chillies and maize. Spanish ships carried them to Europe in the sixteenth century, and for a long time they were grown as ornamentals because botanists lumped them with poisonous nightshades. Italian cooking only embraced them in the eighteenth century, when the sauce tradition took hold. It sits in Mondo's food collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Food & Cooking trivia History trivia

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Tags: tomato, nightshade, columbian-exchange

Tomatoes only reached Europe after 1492: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: The fruit was grown in Mexico and Peru long before Italian cooks saw it. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a food fact?: Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.