Taste of wild tomatoes

[Alex]

Please write down who ate which wild tomatoes, especially green-fruited ones. How edible, tasty, and poisonous they are. How to improve the taste with a good recipe, cooking, marinating, etc. How to make tasteless things tasty using culinary methods.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

pimpinelifolium: Red. Bitter like lycopene. People love them. I don't.
cheesmaniae: yellow/orange. Fair taste.
galapagense: orange. Good taste, but not great.
pennellii: Not the slightest bit appealing.
habrochaites: Not pleasant to eat. Hairy. Bitter.
peruvianum: Can be sweet when very ripe. Nasty before then.
corneliomulleri: same as peruvianum.

[Alex]

What is about neorickii, chmielewskii, arcanum, huaylasense, chilense?

pennellii: Not the slightest bit appealing.

Is it bitter?
Any side effects after eating?
Is it true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx64j_AbvWY "Solanum Pennellii Wild Tomato Is Poisonous"?
Joseph, I'm guessing your experiment was with fresh wild tomatoes, but what about cooked? For example, eggplant is bitter too, but after cooking it's good.

[AndrewB]

pimpinelifolium: no flavor of the accession i tried. People love them. I don't. Maybe others taste fine?
cheesmaniae: yellow/orange. Fair taste.
cheesmaniae-hybrids: good. Very nice.
galapagense: orange. Good taste, more interesting and bigger potential than cheesmaniae. Plants have odd smell like bug spray, which could affect flavor.
pennellii-hybrids: Not pleasant but not awful. Just not great. Green and sour-ish.
habrochaites: Not pleasant to eat. Hairy. Bitter.
chmielewskii: similar to habrochiates I think, not great. This species has some sugar genes though I think.

[Alex]

galapagense: orange. Good taste, more interesting and bigger potential than cheesmaniae. Plants have odd smell like bug spray, which could affect flavor.

And maybe non-hairy variety has less smell, than hairy?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Cooking unripe domestic tomatoes doesn't make the poisonous taste go away. I expect that the wild tomatoes would act the same way.

[Alex]

But I cook unripe green domestic tomatoes. Solanine is absolutely easily accepted by the body. In general, various poisons come in one way or another with food, but they are harmless to a healthy body and are broken down by the kidneys and liver.

[Steph S]

Lots of people talk about using green domestic tomatoes, either fried or pickled usually, and are enthusiastic about it.  So I tried cooking some in a stir fry, the taste was fine, but a half hour later all green tomatoes insisted on leaving the building.  So I'm saying they disagree with me, personally, and wouldn't be an option as a food.
 
Maybe likewise the sensitivity to toxins in wild tomato relatives may depend on your personal genetics.

I grew one Pimpinellifolium once, and the taste was so vile, I could not even choke down a single fruit. I had to spit it out.  Perhaps like tomatoes, there is variation depending on the accession?

Or maybe it is my genetics, that makes the tomato family toxins especially nasty to me.
I noticed that some exotic flavored tomatoes with wild background, were not my favorites at all, while other tasters raved about them.

I also find that years of exposure to tomato plants and tomatoes has caused me to find the smell of large numbers of plants or ripe fruits somewhat repulsive.  So my body/brain/senses are telling me there's something noxious there.
 

[Alex]

I get diarrhea from some store-bought US tomatoes, but I digest Mexican ones normally. The US tomatoes I grew up - I'm in the restroom all day. So this is not from toxins, but from the quality of tomatoes.

[Justin Jardinier]

pennellii-hybrids: Not pleasant but not awful. Just not great. Green and sour-ish.

If we're talking about hybrids, then I can report that lyc x arc tastes pretty nice. A bit of that wheatgerm taste that pimp x pennellii has but nicer.

pimp x chm tastes great. Sweet. Well, I say 'great' - maybe I should reserve that qualification for the F2 but anyway I was impressed.

Oh, damn I forgot now if that faint wheatgerm was lyc x arc or pimp x chm! Anyway pimp x pen tasted strongly of wheatgerm. And had interesting soft texture similar to pure pen.

I ate 2 cheesmaniae today, one accession was so so and tough skin, one was softer or thinner skin and better tasting, good taste actually. Though might have some lyc in it. It's LA3124, flowers only under short day and fruit size like pure cheesmaniae but seed size is a bit big and grew in a way unlike lyc but also different to my other che acessions, vigorous growth.

Pimp also I don't much like.

Green fruited species, tried per pen hab chil chm arc, don't like any of them. Gal ok but so tiny and skin not appealing, not my preferred choice of food though lyc x gal was delicious. Only che x lyc (or might be lyc x che?) I tasted was one someone else supplied as supposedly pure che. Edible, but so so, not interesting for me. I expect will vary from accession to accession though. But does seem gal is better option than che for crossing for flavour, from my limited experience.

Tried only 1 pimp x lyc so far. Sweet. Didn't particularly excite me though - maybe in the F2.

[Justin Jardinier]

I get diarrhea from some store-bought US tomatoes, but I digest Mexican ones normally. The US tomatoes I grew up - I'm in the restroom all day. So this is not from toxins, but from the quality of tomatoes.

Did you try organic heirloom tomatoes from shops? I wonder if might be agricultural chemicals...

[Alex]

These are definitely not chemicals because I grew them in my garden where I don't use chemicals. This is due to the fact that long-storing US tomatoes are not digested by the body, causing digestive disorders. Tomatoes that spoil quickly are soft, do not last long, and are digested normally. But I don't even risk buying US tomatoes, preferring those (not US) grown myself or at least Mexican ones, from which I have no side effects.

[Jeremy Weiss]

These are definitely not chemicals because I grew them in my garden where I don't use chemicals. This is due to the fact that long-storing US tomatoes are not digested by the body, causing digestive disorders. Tomatoes that spoil quickly are soft, do not last long, and are digested normally. But I don't even risk buying US tomatoes, preferring those (not US) grown myself or at least Mexican ones, from which I have no side effects.

That would knock out organic, but the heirloom might still be valid as those are NOT long storing hybrid tomatoes, they go soft and rot quickly as well. They are literally the "old" tomato varieties we grew before modern plant breeding for long term storage.

[Alex]

Yes, old varieties or wild related are good. But the problem is that even the old varieties have lost their original properties, and it is very difficult to find good seeds.

[Alex]

What is about taste of neorickii, arcanum, huaylasense, chilense?