While having dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, I realized that Japanese cuisine doesn’t seem to have a classic combination of tomatoes 🍅 and eggs 🥚, so I looked it up—and discovered an unexpected story. ↓ Summarized by an LLM: 【The Mystery of Tomatoes and Eggs 🍅🍳】 What began as a simple question—“Why is the tomato × egg combo common in Chinese and Western cuisine but absent in Japanese cuisine?”—uncovered a surprising history. 💡 Why It’s Missing in Japanese Cuisine Tomatoes arrived in Japan during the Edo period, but they were feared as poisonous and grown only as ornamental plants. It wasn’t until the Taisho and early Showa eras that people began eating them as vegetables—primarily raw (in salads) or as ketchup. Because of this, tomatoes never integrated into Japan’s traditional dashi-based culinary culture. 💡 Even in China, It’s a Recent Dish! In China too, tomatoes were long considered ornamental. The now-iconic dish “stir-fried tomatoes and eggs” was actually invented in Shanghai during the 1920s–30s! Influenced by Western omelets, it was a modern creation—far from ancient tradition. Since Japan was absorbing Chinese cultural influences during that time, this dish simply didn’t exist yet—and thus never made its way to Japan. The timing mismatch in culinary development is fascinating!