****** said:
The red soil where they grew the tomatoes where I grew up produced some of the best tomatoes I have ever eaten. After moving where I live now, the tomatoes look the same but the taste just isn't the same. 'Mayter sandwiches just aren't as tastey. I think it was the high acidity of that red shale soil that made them sweet and acidic at the same time.
I've never been able to find tomatoes that tasted quite like the tomatoes of my childhood either. And I also think that the most intensely flavored tomatoes are the ones that are very acidic. But our garden was on limestone soil, not acidic soil. So I think the terrific flavor was probably due to the variety. But no one in my family knows for sure what the variety was.
My brother thinks they may have been Brandyines, but he's not sure. I tried some Brandywines and they were OK, but not super flavorful. Then I read that there is a lot of variation within the tomatoes called Brandywine. More recently I haved tasted some other Brandywines that were pretty good.
If anyone knows any tomato varieties that have really intense flavor, please let us know.
The tomatoes I remember as a kid were: large, deep red in color, and had lots of splits around the stem. The inside was not pulpy. The webs (not sure of the right term) were very distinct, and the space between the webs had loads of juice. There was not the pale, pasty, pulpy stuff I see in a lot of tomatoes.
And they were so acid that they'd give you blisters. But the flavor was really outrageous.