Solanum lycopersicum
Tomatoes range from bright and sharp to deeply sweet, depending on variety and ripeness. In the Northeast, they are a frost-tender crop whose fruit quality changes quickly with maturity.1
Lycopene is the red pigment most associated with ripe red tomatoes; yellow and orange varieties have different pigment profiles.2
Tomatoes belong to the nightshade family, alongside potatoes and peppers. Their fruit ripens from green through a variety-specific range of red, yellow, orange, purple, or striped colors.
Tomato is another New World crop. In Maine it generally needs to be started as a seedling so fruit can ripen before fall frost.3
Tomato tissues do not taste interchangeable. The outer wall carries most of the sugars and amino acids, the seed jelly and juice have about twice the wall’s acid concentration, and most aroma compounds sit in the cuticle and wall.4 Removing skin and jelly therefore makes a sauce less watery but also shifts it sweeter and sacrifices aroma and acidity.
Footnotes
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Food & Nutrition for the Home Gardener,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩
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U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, “Tips for Healthy Eating,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “How to Plan Your Garden for Canning and Preserving,” 2023. ↩
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Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, rev. ed. (Scribner, 2004), PDF p. 344. ↩