Centuries of selective breeding turned wild cabbage into different vegetables
worksinprogress.news90 points by bensouthwood 4 days ago
90 points by bensouthwood 4 days ago
Because I love cabbage... the blog post shows "Gai lan" as an Asian example. There are so much more!
You are probably aware of napa cabbage, but there's also Taiwan Cabbage (goes by other names of course...) https://www.westcoastseeds.com/products/taiwan-cabbage
It looks a lot like a flatter "green/european" cabbage. It's leaves and stems are finer and softer than a European cabbage, while still being pretty crunchy (as opposed to napa). Compared to European cabbage, you could actually just stir fry these.
Gai lan is just one variety of "Chinese broccoli" - there are multiple varieties with different stem thicknesses, and "branching ratios". This will let you pick to suit your preferred level of crunch and leaf area to coat with sauce =)
And finally, all of the bok choys are also part of this family.
If you look, you can straight up find the half way points between subfamilies https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/080bca1a659bf2f8b12bca1494c67...
I already knew about this phylogenetic tree (although I have always heard the common ancestor be called the "wild mustard", not wild cabbage), but the article was quite interesting.
I only wish that as a PSA, they had included the reminder to people over 30 years old who hate Brussels sprouts, that the delicious ones you can eat today are not the ones they hated in their youth, and if you haven't had sprouts in years you might want to give them a second try (salted, oiled and baked, not boiled or steamed of course!)
I think the sprouts trauma is the result of picking the wrong cooking method.
I was so surprised when I tried baked sprouts for the first time (use a really host cast iron skilet for even better results) that I started to believe that every vegetable can be delicious as long as you bake it!
There’s many delicious and easy ways to eat vegetable! Two of my favorite:
- Belgian Stoemp: basically smashed-potatoes with smashed-other legumes. Cook everything together (with herbs if you can), smash, add lipid and salt and you’re done!
- German Ein Topf: put vegetables, beans and sausages in a pot (I use tofu ones or tempeh). Cover, cook slowly. It’s almost a salty Tajin from the north.
- Recover bland vegetables (sprouts or anything) to a fantastic soup in 5 minutes: add a bit of water, coconut cream (or caw cream / silken tofu…), spices. A bit of tahin and corail lentils if you have. Mix and adjust water.
Bon appétit :)
The modern cultivars literally taste different, it's not just cooking method. The bitter compounds were identified and bred out.
I wish I could find "authentic" sprouts in supermarkets. I'm sure there's a niche for it.
How long ago did this happen?
1990s research at Novartis, not sure how quickly the new cultivars were adopted,.maybe someone else can chime in
"I started to believe that every vegetable can be delicious as long as you bake it!"
Baking is good, but I also came to another conclusion - vegetables that are disgusting if they are cooked to a slimy paste, can be delicious eaten raw in a salad!
If you liked this, you will be delighted to learn about the “Triangle of U”: the common brassicas are not just tetraploid, they are Frankensteinian mashups of earlier diploid species with different numbers of chromosomes!
Bonus trivia: unlike nearly all plants, brassicas make do without symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi!
Not nearly as drastic as the cabbage case, but to me it’s also interesting that there are three ancestral, wild species of citrus fruit – mandarin, pomelo, and citron – and all the popular modern cultivars are hybrids of those three.
For some reason, there was a whole series of brassica oleracea memes going around in 2020 (does that make it a meta-meme? or is that the meme itself, and the images are just instances of the meme?), and they're still wonderful.
Just image-search "brassica memes" at your favorite engine.
I knew it couldn't be coincidence that a green cabbage looks exactly like a giant brussel sprout.
Ah, yes. You can't throw a rock at produce without hitting a brassica oleracia.
The roots of the young Brachychiton acuminatus can be cooked in ashes and eaten like a sweet potato .. but despite the vast number of rocks in its native habitat .. not a single brassica oleracia will be found by throwing them.
Fun fact, peppers, petunias, datura, and tobacco are all in the same family: Solanaceae.
Sure, but cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, etc, are all the same species.
you have done potatoes a profound insult by not including them in this list
As well as to eggplant and belladonna.
And tomatoes.
Years ago I made harissa out of peppers for sauce for baked chicken wings. To my surprise it tasted tomato-ey.
After doing some Google searches I realized the plants were related and eventually it sort of made sense. Peppers are almost like a very dry, very firm tomato.
In hindsight it's obvious but at the time it was very surprising.
you are both right of course
but for some reason my fealty to potato does not extend to tomatoes and eggplant quite the same way. i feel toward potatoes sort of how gary Larson feels about cows
When I read the title, I immediately though, I think this is going to be about Brussel sprouts etc. as I just saw a video [0] that mentions the same lineage. The video is part of the series about the evolution of the flagellum, which is really well made.
What I appreciate most about these vegetables is that they're much lower in that pesky oxalic acid than most vegetables in the human diet.
I love these vegetables. Especially Broccolini and Brussel Sprouts. YUM
Centuries of selective breeding would turn me into different vegetables too
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