[Sca-cooks] Looking for references to orange carrots

[Terry Decker]

Not exactly true.  Purple carrots show up in local markets in Asia. 
However, the commercially available purple carrots are the product of 
Leonard Pike at Texas A&M who took some Brazilian carrots with purple 
blotches on the skins and  bred them back to purple carrots.  He has 
produced hybrids with the modern orange commercial carrot for better purple 
carrots with better taste and texture and he, at last report, was trying to 
hybridize his purple carrots with Chinese red carrots to increase the 
lycopene in his hybrids.

Now, a small technicality, extinction in its most precise usage is an event 
that happens to a species.  Since D. carota still exists, extinction has not 
occurred.  Purple carrots still appear naturally (in fact, all colors of 
carrots still appear), but they have been marginalized from general use by 
cultivated hybrids.

If you were able to find a natural purple carrot, there is no guarantee 
that, other than being a carrot, it is the same as a purple carrot of 500 
years ago.  Carrots are subject to natural hybridization, which made them 
excellent subjects for controlled hybridizaztion.  I wouldn't be too 
concerned about Pike's purple carrots not being truly Medieval.  Use them 
for verisimilitude and enjoy the add health benefits that have been grown 
in.

Bear



> Now, I found "purple" carrots from an "Heirloom" company with the 
> intention of growing "period" carrots. My Dad told me that the variety I 
> have is actually modern and that the original purple carrots are extinct.
> Aelina
> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
>
>> Additional references towards carrots. I too thought the orange carrot 
>> was
>> recent invention and that carrots were originally a dark color. As I
>> understand they originated from Afghanistan?
>> http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodcakes.html#carrots
>> This link also has the National Geographic article and a link to the
>> carrot museum in the UK...
>> Bless Bless
>> Aelina
>
> Daucus carota ssp. carota is the wild carrot.  It has had a tremendous
> natural range since prehistoric times and the point of origin is unknown.
> In Europe, it was commonly white and usually not differentiated from 
> parsnip
> root.
>
> Daucus carota ssp sativa is the cultivated carrot.  The oldest cultivated
> group of this subspecies are the anthocyan carrots, believed to have
> originated in the area of Afghanistan where the Himalayas and the Hindu 
> Kush
> meet, with pigmentation produced by anthocyanins and anthochlors.
> Predominence of anthocyanins produce the darker colors, purples, violets,
> blacks and blues.  Predominence of anthochlors produces the yellow
> varietals.  As the cultivated carrot spread out from Afghanistan, it went
> through some adaptations creating several regional groupings that may be
> considered subspecies.  The cultivated carrot that found its way into 
> Europe
> may be a cross between D. sativa and D. maximus (a wild varietal found in
> the Mediterranean basin), producing a carrot without anthocyans, but 
> having
> anthochlors and carotene.  One of the varietals produced is a red carotene
> carrot.  It is worth noting that a number of Medieval authors considered 
> the
> taste and texture of the red carrot superior, and it is my opinion they 
> were
> referring to the carotene carrot.
>
> The original orange carrots are probably pigmentation variants of the
> carotene carrot (and we have evidence of orange carrots from around 1100).
> These were possibly hybridized with anthoclor carrots and wild white
> European carrots to produce the orange carrots that became predominent in
> the Netherlands and were described by J. H. Knoop in the 18th Century.
> Among what Knoop described are the "Horn" cultivars that are the base 
> stock
> for today's commercial carrots.  These particular orange carrot varietals
> probably didn't exist much before the 17th Century.
>
> Bear