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May 19, 2013, 11:03pm

Any Port in a Storm :: Dockside Dining :: On the Menu :: Tasteless tomatoes

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Topic: Tasteless tomatoes (Read 187 times)

kerouac2
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Tasteless tomatoes
« Thread Started on Jul 1, 2012, 4:44am »

The fact that most tomatoes have lost their taste in recent decades is a worldwide scourge, even when you grow your own tomatoes and pick them at the point of ultimate maturity. They're just not the same anymore.

Here's why.

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Don Cuevas
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My name really isn't Don, but I used to be anónimo.

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Re: Tasteless tomatoes
« Reply #1 on Jul 1, 2012, 8:21pm »

We have been eating Pretty Damn Good tomatoes in New Jersey. They certainly are more flavorful than the tasteless ones we get in Mexico.

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Panza llena, corazón contento.
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kerouac2
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Re: Tasteless tomatoes
« Reply #2 on Jul 1, 2012, 9:25pm »

So the plague has not spread to NJ yet -- good to know!

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hwinpp
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Re: Tasteless tomatoes
« Reply #3 on Jul 2, 2012, 10:16am »

I thought they come from Mexico. Wouldn't they be pretty good then with all the old types they might have?

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lagatta
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Re: Tasteless tomatoes
« Reply #4 on Jul 2, 2012, 11:37pm »

Bixa has had a lot to say about this and the relative lack of flavour of many - locally-grown - tomatoes from their country of origin.

Unlike corn/maize, I don't think tomatoes here spread north from Meso-America, but were re-imported by Europeans.

What kerouac says certainly seems true over the decades, but several of us have found that in recent years we've had out-of-season local or localish (Ontario) tomatoes that are far better than the red golfballs of two or three decades ago.

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kerouac2
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Re: Tasteless tomatoes
« Reply #5 on Jul 3, 2012, 5:55am »

In France, too, heirloom tomatoes are returning to even the supermarkets, but I fear they will eventually succumb to the same fate. Producers will always try to make their product "better" -- more evenly sized and something that won't spoil so fast. This is what ruins tomatoes in the first place.

When everybody started refusing to buy the Dutch hothouse tomatoes, one of best things to suddenly appear were the branch tomatoes -- they were delicious. But now the branch tomatoes all look identical, last a long time and have no flavour because they were standardised.

At the moment, the heirloom tomatoes are all different sizes and all different hues, but that won't last very long.

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lagatta
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Re: Tasteless tomatoes
« Reply #6 on Jul 3, 2012, 1:41pm »

Oh dear, I'm heading to Amsterdam for a short jaunt and something I dread (other than the nasty cool weather - it gets so cold here in the wintertime that I just have to bask in warmth and warm my bones in the summer) is the uniformly tasteless, Dutch hothouse tomato. Even in summer. I'll go buy some real tomatoes at the organic market if I have time, but if the temperature doesn't increase, they still won't be wonderful.

The best tomatoes I've ever eaten are Italian ones (not the Roma used for sauce, big roundish, irregularly-shaped ones) that are dappled green and red when fully ripe.

I can certainly get heirloom tomatoes at Marché Jean-Talon, but not everyone here lives close to a public market, or has a little garden patch (private or in a community garden).

In spite of everything, I don't find the branch tomatoes as bad as those Dutch bowling balls.

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rikita
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Re: Tasteless tomatoes
« Reply #7 on Jul 8, 2012, 8:59am »

i don't know how they are compared to decades ago, but there is definitely a difference between different types, and also depending on whether they are "bio" or not. the best ones taste wise are the ones i buy at the bio-shop, and there in fact they are often not quite as red as in the supermarket. the ones on my balcony tend to taste even better though - and some of those do get quite red. the ones on my balcony i didn't really like were one of the "historic" breeds that was yellowish-pinkish. they just never tasted right. there were other historic types though that tasted really good that i grew before...

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