It’s August and in my household that means one thing: local tomatoes. For much of the year, our grocery stores offer tomatoes tough enough to endure machine picking followed by days or weeks in cold storage. Even the more expensive, so-called “vine-ripened” ones, still attached to a desiccated bit of vine as proof of their provenance – are a whole lot prettier than they taste. But for the next month or so, we can feast on sweet, sun-kissed tomatoes plucked ripe from the vine. Really.

I have always associated tomatoes with Italian cooking. I imagined ancient roman emperors gorging on succulent tomatoes, juices dripping from their greedy fingers. Not so! Many centuries passed before Europeans and Americans embraced the tomato as a culinary treasure. The earliest tomato plant, which produced tiny round fruits, originated in South America. By 500 B.C. the Aztecs were cultivating tomatoes and cooking them. In the early 16th century, the missionary priest and ethnographer Bernardino de Sahagún reported seeing a wide variety of tomatoes in all colors in the Aztec market in what is now Mexico City: “large tomatoes, small tomatoes, leaf tomatoes, sweet tomatoes, large serpent tomatoes, nipple-shaped tomatoes.”

Tomatoes first appeared in Europe in the early 16th century, possibly in the care of Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes after his exploration of Mexico. From Spain the tomato traveled throughout southern Europe, where the temperate climate encouraged its cultivation. The first literary reference to the tomato appeared in an herbal (a medical text describing plants’ appearances, properties and medicinal uses) written in 1544 by Pietro Andrea Mattioli, an Italian physician and botanist. He named it the pomod’oro — golden apple. Soon tomatoes were grown all over Italy. In 1548, it was reported that a basket of tomatoes from the country estate of Cosimo de Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, had “arrived safely” at the ducal palazzo in Florence.

But interestingly, although the tomato began to appear all over Europe and in England, its use was strictly decorative. Because the tomato plant is in the nightshade family (Solanaceae), it was widely considered to be poisonous, like its botanical cousins belladonna and deadly nightshade. Ornamental tomato plants were grown in perennial beds along with columbine and foxgloves, and the fruits graced the centerpieces of dining tables. An agronomist who worked under Henry IV noted that “love apples are marvelous and golden, they serve commonly to cover outhouses and arbors.” (I haven’t been able to track down the date when the British first dubbed tomatoes as “love apples.” If anyone knows, please tell me!)

Tomatoes finally made it to the dining table as food rather than decoration in the 18th century. In America, lengthy cooking time was advised in order to rid the fruit of poison. “Godey’s Lady’s Book” of 1860, the ubiquitous women’s household guide, recommended that tomatoes be cooked for three hours. Just an hour’s cooking would result in “a sour porridge.”

The delight of eating a raw tomato was a longer time coming. According to Waverly Root in his culinary encyclopedia, “Food,” “it was in 1840 that a daredevil named Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson, standing on the steps of the courthouse of Salem, New Jersey, defied death publicly by eating a raw tomato.” Root added, “He survived, but if by an unfortunate coincidence he had suffered a heart attack the following day, we would probably not be eating tomatoes yet.”

The Italians were more adventurous with tomatoes in the kitchen. A man named Francesco Leonardi, who eventually became the cook for Catherine the Great of Russia in around 1770, popularized the cooking of tomatoes much the way we do today. In France, although the tomato occasionally appeared in the cuisine of the aristocracy, the tomato remained a bit player until the early 20th century. In Great Britain, the tomato was used primarily in ketchup and other sauces, mixed with vinegar and spices.

It seems that the culinary gods were intent on keeping tomatoes out of the kitchen. Even once the tomato was deemed safe to eat and tasty, too, its reputation took another hit in the late 19th century in America and Great Britain when it was said to be carcinogenic. Not only were tomatoes accused of causing cancer, they were also shunned as too expensive for common consumption.

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Botanically speaking, the tomato is a fruit, specifically, a berry, having hollow interior spaces filled with seeds and juice. But legally, the tomato is a vegetable, according to an 1893 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that differentiated vegetables and fruits according to their use. The Court reasoned that the tomato is generally served with dinner rather than dessert. (The case involved tariff laws that were imposed on vegetables but not on fruits.)

Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to, fruit or vegetable — make sure to enjoy your fill of the wonderful local tomatoes at farm stands and farmers markets and even some supermarkets! The season passes much too soon.

Mickey Rathbun is an Amherst-based writer whose new book, “The Real Gatsby: George Gordon Moore, A Granddaughter’s Memoir,” has recently been published by White River Press.