The Spanish and Italians were the first people to adopt it as a food; it has remained a staple of Italian cuisine. The Italians call it “pomodoro”, the golden apple, which has given rise to speculation that the first tomatoes known to Europeans were green or yellow. Similarly the French called it “pomme d’amour” the love apple because it was thought to have aphrodisiac properties.

Some scholars assert tomato was at first taken to be a kind of eggplant, as eggplant was called “pomme des Mours”, apple of the Moors because it was one of the favorite vegetables of the Arabs and pomodoro and pomme d’amour may be corruptions of this name.