Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?
I’ve yet again run across the claim that it’s an error to call a tomato a “vegetable,” because it’s really a fruit. I’d blogged about this three and a half years ago, but I thought I’d rerun the post to get reader comments (which weren’t enabled when I originally posted this). The tomato, it seems to me, is both a fruit and a vegetable. It is indeed, botanically speaking, a fruit, a term that’s technically defined as “The ripened ovary or ovaries of a seed-bearing plant, together with accessory parts, containing the seeds and occurring in a wide variety of forms.” But it’s also a vegetable, defined as “[t]he edible part of” “[a] plant cultivated for an edible part, such as the root of the beet, the leaf of spinach, or the flower buds of broccoli or cauliflower.” These are from the American Heritage Dictionary, not a scientific work, but my sense is that these are indeed the official definitions. Now naturally in lay English, the matter is different: Apples aren’t usually labeled vegeta
Botanists (scientists who study plants) classify the tomato (Lycopericon esculentum) technically as a berry, which in a scientific sense, is a simple fruit. But horticulturists (people who cultivate plants) and the United States Department of Agriculture, in its bulletins and reports, classify the tomato as a vegetable. On May 10, 1893, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the tomato is a vegetable and, as such, is subject to import taxes under the United States Tariff Act of 1883. The Tariff Act imposed taxes on imported vegetables but not on fruits. Sources: Herbst, Sharon X The New Food Lover’s Companion: Comprehensive Definitions of Over 4000 Food, Wine, and Culinary Terms, p. 592; Stimpson, George. Information Roundup, p. 210.
The confusion arises because of the difference in usage between scientists and cooks. True fruits develope and contain seeds within the fruit. Raspberries and oranges for example. Some plants have soft parts which contain the seeds and are fruits, the strawberry is an example. In cooking fruits may be called vegetables because of the savoury requirement and the tomato therefore is used as a vegetable. Also a bean pod is technically a fruit. The vegetable is a term used of other edible parts of plants, such as cabbage leaves, celery and potatoes which are not the fruit of the plant from which they come.
