When Brussel Sprouts suddenly popped up on every menu in San Francisco many years ago, I was both delighted and curious. Like many others I went from being barely aware of the food to enjoying it on a regular basis.
I'd often remark to people that there had to have been some development in agriculture or supply chain support that caused this, but no one ever agreed with me. Like seriously not a single person ever said "yeah, I wonder what it was". Everyone thought it was just a trend. Those who were more of the foodie type insisted it was some famous chef who had kicked it off. I would say sure maybe that was the spark but there had to be something else. This sort of phenomenon is not like a friction-less meme on the Internet, nor like a fashion trend which comes from an industry with supply chains tuned to support to rapid re-specialization.
Well, finally the answer to this puzzle has arrived (via Marginal Revolution). In the 1960s Big Ag dominated the market with a strain of Brussel Sprouts that had great yields for mechanized production, but were more bitter, causing a drop in popularity for a good generation or two, and then:
A study published in 1999 by scientists from the seed and chemical company Novartis managed to pinpoint the specific compounds that gave Brussel sprouts their undesired bitterness: two glucosinolates called sinigrin and progoitrin.
This helped to prompt a number of seed companies to sift through gene banks to look for old varieties of vegetables that happened to have low levels of the bitter chemicals, according to NPR. These less bitter varieties were then cross-pollinated with modern high-yielding ones, aiming to get the best of both worlds: a better-tasting product that could be cultivated on an industrial scale. After years of patience, they eventually produced a crop that was both tasty and economically viable.
And just like that, the former glory of Brussels sprouts was restored, shifting this vegetable from a culinary pariah to a prized side dish.
Click through on the photo below for a Brussel Sprouts Salad recipe I got from a friend:
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