Apple of my tomato
Will Q., who's been providing me with all sorts of cool URLs that I haven't had a chance to post in recent weeks, went off and did the pomme d'amour research online that I should've done before posting. Thanks, Will!
He came up with all sorts of cool pages that I don't have time to read right now, much less summarize and point to. But I'll relay two items in particular:
A Philologos column mentions English naturalist Henry Lyte's 1578 claim that the love apple has "ragingly amorus" effects on the eater. That seems like a plausible enough explanation of the term to me. (I do think it's interesting that tomato has been used as a slang term to refer to an attractive woman, given that the tomato is related to the belladonna plant, since belladonna means basically "beautiful woman.")
But even more interesting than all that is the mention on that site (as well as another Will mentioned) of the phrase pomo d'oro, meaning "golden apple," which mixed with pomo d'amoro to become pomidoro. My main association with the term "golden apple" is, of course, the golden apple (labeled Kallisti) that Eris used to set in motion the events leading to the Trojan War. Which leads ineluctably to the question:
Might Eris's golden apple have in fact been a love apple, which is to say a tomato?
(This is the second opportunity I've had to use the word ineluctable recently. I'm now tempted to start applying it to various political candidates. Which perhaps suggests just how silly a mood I seem to be in.)