[Sca-cooks] Broccoli & Cauliflower

[Christine Seelye-King]

Waverly Root goes on for some while about the confusing origins of broccoli
and cauliflower, but basically toward the end, he sums up by saying that all
of the varieties of cabbage can be cross-bred in and out of different shapes
and colors, by encouraging one part of the plant over another to develop.
He says that he suspects the Romans had something similar to what we now
think of as broccoli,
"It may be that the Romans themselves created broccoli from its ancestor,
the cabbage, unless the Etruscans, who were better gardeners than they were,
did it for them."  Then about cauliflower: "The ancient Romans grew the
cauliflower, whether they invented it themselves or imported it ready-made
from Asia-Minor, which is where most reference books say it originated.  It
is possible that Italy forgot the art of growing cauliflower during the Dark
Ages and that, untended, it reverted to the original cabbage, only to be
re-invented or re-imported later; in any case, it does not seem to have been
grown north of the Alps before the Rennaissance."
Seems plausible to me.
Christianna