It's high noon on September 26th 1820, and you are in Salem, New Jersey. The solanum lycopersicum, also known as the wolf peach, the love apple, the jerusalem apple, and the tomato, still hasn't been eaten by anyone, anywhere in the United States. The sinister reputation of this poisonous, rich, round, pulpous mass, known to botanists as a flower, but shunned, feared and despised as an edible fruit, is about to be eaten in front of an excited, but highly sceptical crowd, by Colonel Johnson, the wealthiest man in Salem County.