At the market there are four or five different tomatoes, and they all carry the name "tomato." But the difference shows up in the middle of a recipe: the menemen turns watery, the salça refuses to thicken, the tomato in the salad falls flat. These are not flaws in the recipe; they are usually the result of choosing the wrong type. This article gathers, in one place, the tomato types most commonly seen in Turkish kitchens, which one is right for which recipe, and the critical notes on season, ripeness and storage.
There is no single "tomato," there are dozens of types
Botanically, the tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a fruit, but culturally we use it as a vegetable. About two thousand years ago it moved from the Andes to Mexico, and from there to Europe in the 16th century. Selective cultivation since then has produced thousands of varieties. Smithsonian Magazine recounts how the tomato was first considered an ornamental plant in Europe and was not eaten, and how the myth of its being poisonous was only dispelled in the 19th century.
Today the world counts more than ten thousand recorded varieties. Turkish markets show a small slice of this: pink, red paste, cherry, large fleshy, greenhouse, and a few heirloom types. Each one differs in juice, flesh, sugar-to-acid balance and aroma intensity. That is why a recipe behaves differently when one variety is swapped for another.