In lasagna history, tomatoes arrived in Europe after Columbus reached the Americas in 1492.
The year 1492 marks Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas and the beginning of the Columbian Exchange, the movement of plants, animals, diseases, and foods between the Americas and the Old World. Tomatoes were among the American crops that eventually crossed the Atlantic and later transformed European cooking.
The wording does not mean tomatoes appeared in European kitchens immediately in 1492. Spanish distribution took place during the 16th century, and the earliest known discussion of tomatoes in European literature appeared in Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s 1544 herbal. Early Europeans often treated the plant as ornamental or viewed it with suspicion because it belonged to the nightshade family.
Tomatoes therefore could not have been part of medieval lasagna recipes. Older lasagna-like dishes used pasta, cheese, spices, broth, or animal fat instead. Tomato-based sauces became important much later, especially in southern Italian cooking, and eventually shaped the red, layered lasagna familiar around the world.