The humble tomato is now a staple part of cooking and the kitchen. Used in dishes from salsa and pasta to soup, many of the world's most popular food are now reliant on it.

As popularity has grown so has the argument about whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. In the strictest sense it is a fruit, the tomato encloses reproductive seeds. Many people still refer to the tomato as a vegetable, mainly due to its use in savory dishes, and in truth does it really matter.

Although popular today, history has not always seen the tomato as a favored food. It has not been a smooth path from the Peruvian mountains to the kitchen of today.

The tomato originated in the Americas, and the most common quoted place of origin is Peru. Domestic cultivation of it though occurred further north into Mexico and other Central American countries. This cultivation caused domestication, and the wild useless weed was transformed into a plant the produced a high yield of flavorsome fruit.

The Americas were conquered by Spanish explorers from the 15th century onwards. These explorers would take back the tomato to their homeland, from where it would spread around the rest of the Mediterranean.

Tomatoes are part of the potato family, the 'Solanaceae' which also includes eggplants. This means that the tomato is also part of the Nightshade family, which resulted in the belief by many people that the tomato itself was poisonous. This belief was not helped by the fact that the tomato plant looks very similar to the Deadly Nightshade.

This similarity brought about its Latin name, Lycopersicon esculentum, meaning 'edible wolf peach'. At a time when it was believed that werewolves were summoned by witches and warlocks using nightshade, tomatoes became known as 'wolf peach'.

The belief that the tomato was poisonous obviously prevented it becoming popular in North America and non-Mediterranean areas of Europe. This changed in the 19th century. The tomato became popular in the United States when a public demonstration was undertaken in 1820. This demonstration saw Colonel Robert Johnson eating a basket of tomatoes in front of a crowd with no resulting illness.

At a time when vegetable cultivation was still done in people's back gardens, the tomato plant soon became a firm favorite. Indeed it is from these back gardens that today's Heirloom tomatoes have emerged from.