A la recherche de la tomate perdue: The first French tomato recipe?

Abstract

While tomatoes featured in numerous recipes in Italian and Spanish cookbooks of the eighteenth century, they were curiously absent from French cookbooks, although by the end of the eighteenth century tomatoes were certainly available in southern France. In the Archives Departementales de Vaucluse a handwritten recipe for a highly concentrated tomato puree, dated 1795, possibly represents the earliest French tomato recipe.