Tomato processing in history

The first tomatoes can be traced to the South American Andes Mountains where they grew wild as cherry sized berries. Europeans were introduced to the tomato in the late 15th century to early mid-16th century, and generally reacted with fear and scorn, due largely to the tomato’s membership in the family Solanacea, which includes many poisonous species such as the deadly nightshade.

An early as 1540s tomato started being produced in Spanish field and was used regularly as a common food in early 17th century other European countries did not adopt tomato immediately.

Tomato processing began in 1847, when Harrison Woodhull Crosby, the chief gardener at Lafayette College developed a crude method of canning tomatoes. Prior to 1890 all tomato canning was done by hand.

In 1897 soup mogul Joseph Campbell came out with condensed tomato soup, a move that set the company on the road to wealth as well as further endearing the tomato to the general public.

According to Jackson Morrow in his book entitled “The History of Howard County” states that tomato juice was first served as a beverage drink in 1917 by Louis Perrin at the French Lick springs Hotel in Southern Indiana, when he ran out of orange juice and needed a quick substitute. His combination of squeezed tomatoes, sugar and his special sauce became an instant success as Chicago business men.

Industry techniques improved with canning technology, and tomato juice came on the market with the development of the juice extractor in the 1920s.

In 1924 a local physician had requested that Kemp brothers develop a baby food that he could use feed babies in his clinic. Kemp brothers succeeded by creating new equipment and a new process that reduced the tomato solids to such fineness by homogenization that they did not settle as sediment. Canned tomato juice came out of this research four years later, on August 31, 1928.
Tomato processing in history