UTS researchers are uncovering the pivotal role Sydney's Italian migrant fruit and vegetable shop owners have played in Australian food production and distribution.

By altering the Australian palate and enriching its cuisine, the Italian migrant fruiterers whetted the national appetite for more excursions into other people's culinary arts, and a much more adventurous approach to cooking and eating.

The research project is being undertaken by Associate Professor Paula Hamilton, Dr Paul Ashton and Jennifer Cornwall from the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS, in collaboration with the Italian community organisation CoAsIt.

Following the arrival of the first Italian migrants to Australia from southern Italy in the 1890s, the Italian migrant population grew steadily to form the largest non-British migrant group recorded in the 1933 census.

Fifty-eight years later, although they represented little more than two per cent of the population, Italian-born Australians owned one in three fruit and vegetable stores in Australia.

While many historians believe racist attitudes in the general community motivated Italians to go into fruit and vegetable businesses, the UTS researchers dismiss this view.

"There was some racial prejudice particularly in the 1930s when Australian unions were concerned about foreigners taking their jobs, and during the Second World War," Dr Ashton said.

"But there were more powerful incentives. Italian migrants came from provincial areas with skills in market gardening and as orchard workers. They knew about the fruit and vegetable business. It also provided them with a home, and a workplace where they could make the most of family labour."

Another important factor in the success of Italian fruiterers, according to Professor Hamilton, was that many of their kin worked in other areas that fed into and out of these shops, including market gardens, restaurants and other food agencies.

While supplying Italian homes and restaurants with fresh food, the Italian shopkeepers introduced Australians to fruit and vegetables they had never seen before.

"As well as introducing us to capsicum and eggplant, we suspect the Italians may have put pumpkin on our menus," Professor Hamilton said. "The English didn't, they gave their pumpkins to their pigs."

Many Italian fruit and vegetable businesses have remained in the family for generations. Lombardo's in Milson's Point, which is thought to be the oldest existing Italian fruit and vegetable shop in Sydney, was established in the 1920s by the Taranto family.