Tomatoes - Grape
They are delicious, they are relatively new to the tomato world, and they are becoming a favorite to many consumers!
The first tomato plants grew wild in Peru and Northern Chile - very small fruit about the size of a pea. The grape tomato is in fact grape-shaped, and generally has thicker skin than cherry tomatoes, for example, and are quite flavorful - sweet, juicy, firm and bite-sized.
The grape tomato is a hybrid - Santa F1 - F1 hybrid means the first generation created by crossing two different parent varieties. Note: Seeds from an F1 hybrid will not produce if replanted. Although this particular hybrid of grape tomato was not the first to be developed, it has become the most successful. Surely, more hybrids will be developed, and more grape tomato varieties will arrive in the marketplace.
The initial trial for the grape tomato was not very successful - consumers showed little if any interest. Today, however, the grape tomato has surpassed consumer demand over the round, cherry tomato.
Lycopersicon esculentum - French botanist Tournefort's Latin name for the tomato translates into wolfpeach - peach because it was round and delicious, wolf because it was considered poisonous - erroneously. The English word tomato comes from the Spanish tomatl - which appeared in print in 1595. Although the leaves of the tomato are poisonous - they are a member of the nightshade family - the fruit is now accepted as a fabulous, nutritious fruit that is referred to as a vegetable!
Enjoy grape tomatoes in fresh vegetable salads, sliced in half for pizzas, in soups, with cheese strata, in casseroles, stir fries, or as crudite with your favorite dipping sauce.