Sweet tomatoes and hot chilies

TOMATO

The tomato came to Europe after Columbus’s journey to America. There are notes about tomatoes growing in Swedish gardens in the 17thoch 18thcenturies. As with the potato, the popularity of tomatoes started in the cities. This was early in the 19thcentury, but the popularity and use of tomatoes increased first around 1930 when we started to roast tomatoes, use it for pickled herring, and serve tomatoes on the plate. Ketchup is introduced in the 1910s, but becomes widely popular from the 1950s and onwards.

CHILI

Chili has been used as a spice ground into powder (“Chilipeppar”) since just after the Second World War. In the 1980s, chili became more widely used, but when the cookbook Eat the Heat was published in 1996 the use of chilies literally exploded. Since the turn of the millennium, the use of and the supply of different chilies continues to increase year by year.