🔍 A Lost Language of Flavor | ⏳ 10-min read

The Discovery

The air in the county historical society's archive smelled like my grandmother's attic: dust and vanilla, with notes of something indefinable that only old paper can produce. I wasn't looking for anything in particular that Tuesday afternoon. Just browsing, the way you might wander through a used bookstore with no destination in mind.

Then I saw it.

The spine read "Briggs & Brother's Garden Annual (1887)" in faded gold lettering. The cover was soft beneath my fingertips, its once-vibrant lithograph now muted by 130 years of existence. I opened it carefully, and the pages crackled like autumn leaves. Inside, hand-colored illustrations bloomed across cream-colored paper: vegetables rendered with an artist's care, each variety given the dignity of a portrait.

When I turned to the tomato section, I stopped breathing.

Names Like Poetry, Flavors Like Memory

There were dozens of them. Not the "Early Girl" or "Better Boy" I knew from garden centers, but varieties with names that sounded like characters from a novel: Purple Calabash. Trophy. Golden Queen. Mikado. Ponderosa.

But it wasn't just the names. It was the language.

The catalog described the Purple Calabash as having "a rich, smoky sweetness unmatched in the garden, with flesh so tender it practically dissolves on the tongue." The Trophy was "incomparably luscious, with a perfect balance of sugar and acid that makes it equally suited to the table and the preserving jar." Golden Queen promised "a surprisingly complex flavor—bright, almost tropical notes dancing beneath the traditional tomato taste."

I realized, sitting there in that quiet room, that this language for describing tomatoes had gone extinct. When was the last time anyone called a supermarket tomato "luscious"? When had a produce manager ever promised something would "dissolve on the tongue"?

The Memory That Clicked

My grandfather used to stand in the produce aisle of our local grocery store, holding a pale pink tomato in his weathered hands, shaking his head. "These aren't tomatoes," he'd mutter. "Not real ones." I was young then, maybe ten, and I thought he was just being difficult. Old people are always saying things were better in their day, right?

But in that archive, with that catalog open before me, I understood. What he carried wasn't just nostalgia. It was evidence. Material, biological evidence of something we'd collectively lost and then forgotten we'd lost. He remembered a flavor that no longer existed on grocery store shelves, and nobody believed him because they'd never tasted it themselves.

I took photos of every page of that tomato section. I had research to do.

The Experiment Begins

Three weeks later, my kitchen table was covered in seed packets. I'd tracked down Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Seed Savers Exchange (organizations I'd never heard of that turned out to be the keepers of these botanical time capsules). I ordered Purple Calabash, Cherokee Purple, and Pineapple (all 19th-century varieties). For comparison, I also bought a standard hybrid from the hardware store and picked up a few tomatoes from the supermarket.

By May, my small backyard garden had become a living laboratory. The heirloom plants grew differently (more sprawling, less uniform). Their leaves smelled stronger when I brushed against them. Even before they fruited, they seemed more alive somehow, more insistent on being noticed.

The first Purple Calabash tomato appeared in late July. It was deeply wrinkled, almost ugly by modern standards—something that would never pass the cosmetic inspection required by grocery store buyers. But when I leaned down to smell it, still on the vine, the scent was so powerful it made me dizzy. Sweet, earthy, with something almost floral underneath.

The Flavor That Broke My Scale

The supermarket tomato tasted like red water my sister offered kindly like the idea of a tomato rather than an actual tomato.

The hybrid was better firmer sweeter. Perfectly acceptable wrote a neighbor on her scorecard. Acceptable I thought. Thats the worst compliment you can give food.

Then came the Purple Calabash.

My sister closed her eyes when she bit into it. Juice ran down her chin. Oh she said. Just oh. Then This is what Grandpa was talking about. This is it.

She was right. The flavor was a different species of experience entirely sweet but balanced with a brightness that made my mouth water. There was an earthiness a depth that tasted like summer smells cut grass and warm soil and afternoon thunderstorms.

The Cherokee Purple was just as stunning darker richer with an almost winelike complexity. The Pineapple lived up to its name with subtle tropical notes weaving through traditional tomato flavor.

We sat there eating slices in silence like we were in church. The supermarket tomato went first. "It tastes like... red water?" my sister offered, trying to be kind. "Like the idea of a tomato rather than an actual tomato."

The hybrid was better. Firmer. Sweeter. Everyone agreed it was good. One neighbor wrote "perfectly acceptable" on her scorecard, and I thought: acceptable. That's the worst compliment you can give food. Acceptable means forgettable.

Then came the Purple Calabash.

My sister closed her eyes when she bit into it. Juice ran down her chin. "Oh," she said. Just "oh." Then: "This is what Grandpa was talking about. This is it."

She was right. The flavor was almost overwhelming, a complexity I didn't know tomatoes could possess. Sweet, yes, but balanced with a brightness that made my mouth water. There was an earthiness, a depth, something that tasted like summer smells: cut grass and warm soil and afternoon thunderstorms. It wasn't just different from the supermarket tomato. It was a different species of experience entirely.

The Cherokee Purple was just as stunning in its own way—darker, richer, with an almost wine-like complexity. The Pineapple lived up to its name with subtle tropical notes weaving through traditional tomato flavor.