Tomatoes trace their roots to South America, thriving wild across the Andean slopes of what's now Peru and Ecuador. But the plant that got them there wasn't the tomato you'd recognize. It was tiny, tart, and closer in size to a currant than anything you'd slice for a sandwich.

Oddly enough, the cultures living closest to that wild origin never domesticated it. Instead, the plant made its way north into Mesoamerica, and the Aztecs transformed it. Through generations of selective cultivation, they bred it larger, sweeter, and recognizably tomato-shaped. By the early 1500s, tomatoes were a fixture of Aztec cooking, showing up in recipes that combined them with chilies and seasoning, essentially an early salsa.

The name survived the journey too. "Tomato" comes from the Aztec Nahuatl word "xitomatl."

When Spanish conquistadors brought tomatoes back across the Atlantic after the fall of Tenochtitlan, Europe wasn't impressed. The tomato belongs to the nightshade family, and most Europeans assumed it was poisonous, keeping it only as a garden ornamental for decades. Italy was the exception. Once Italians embraced it in the kitchen, the tomato began its slow takeover of world cuisine.