A Helping Of Brussels Sprouts
They are the Marmite of the vegetable world, their presence on the Christmas dinner table likely to provoke joy or outright disgust. Containing more vitamin C than an orange and with just eighty calories in a half pound, Britons eat more of them than any other European country, around 40,000 tonnes a year, and consume two-thirds outside of the festive season.
Brassica oleracea, variety gemmifera, the Brussels sprout, is a member of the mustard family, Brassicaceae, and a cultivar of the wild cabbage indigenous in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. Unlike the cabbage, which grows directly from the ground, the edible part of the Brussels sprout plant, the cabbage-like buds about an inch or two in size, form in leaf axils along its tall stem.
They may have been first cultivated by the Romans, but more certainly were grown in Flanders and northern France from the 12th century. Mentioned in some market regulations for the Brussels area in 1213, their association with the area earned the vegetable its distinctive name. The first written description of them was provided by Dutch botanist, Rembertus Dodonaeus, in 1587.
By the 17th century sprouts had arrived in Britain, one writer describing in 1623 a cabbage plant “bearing some fifty heads the size of an egg”. Dorothy Hartley in Food in England (1954) cites a gardening manual from 1699 which provides instructions on cooking a vegetable very much like a Brussels sprout, for which, rather than Flanders, “the best seed of this plant comes from Denmark and Russia”.
Hannah Glasse also told her readers how to cook them in her The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747). “Cabbage and all Sorts of young Sprouts must be boiled in a great deal of Water. When the Stalks are tender, or fall to the bottom, they are enough; then take them off before they lose their Colour…Young sprouts you send to the Table just as they are”.
These references pre-date what the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) cites as the first published reference to the Brussels sprout in English. In his A Plain and Easy Introduction to the Knowledge and Practice of Gardening (1796), the then vicar of the Blixworth in Northamptonshire, Charles Marshall, wrote that “Brussels sprouts are winter greens growing much like borrcole”, kale, perhaps indicating that the plants were valued more for the tuft of leaves than their sprouts.
The first recipe directly referring to Brussels sprouts appeared in Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845). She was certainly cooking the buds, which she described as “at their fullest growth scarcely exceed a large walnut in size”. They were to be boiled for eight to ten minutes in salted water and served “upon a rather thick round of toasted bread buttered on both sides…This is the Belgian mode of dressing this excellent vegetable”. The French, she observed, served them with sauce or tossed them in a stewpan with spice of butter, pepper, salt, and veal gravy.
Sprouts were still much of a novelty well into the 19th century. However, their appearance in late autumn made them an ideal fresh vegetable for the table just as the idea of having a large feast to celebrate Christmas Day was taking root in Victorian sensibilities. They were a match made in heaven, at least for some.
Next time we will find out why some people do not like Brussels sprouts. It might be in the genes.
