Do you love your Brussels sprouts or are they confined to Christmas dinners? Heritage veg enthusiast Rob Smith loves them and highlights some of his favourite old varieties

Rob Smith

NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS

Brussels sprouts have to be one of the biggest ‘Marmite’ vegetables around. Love them or hate them, there doesn’t seem to be any middle ground when it comes to these teeny cabbagelike vegetables. I blame most of the negative press on school dinners, with sprouts that were carelessly boiled for around three and a half days, making them soft, squishy, and stinky too! However, this may not be the whole story.There is modern research to suggest that some humans could have a hypersensitive gene dating back to Neanderthal times.

This gene makes us sensitive to bitter tastes, including those given off by some Brussels sprouts varieties. So the next time someone blames school dinners for their chronic hatred of sprouts, remind them not to blame the poor dinner ladies as it could be in their genes. Some people are just born to hate sprouts!

UNEARTHING THE SPROUT

When it comes to unearthing the history surrounding the humble Brussels sprout, there are a couple of versions of the story. One theory is that they mutated from wild cabbage, around the same time as broccoli, cauliflower, kohl rabi and kale, meaning humans have eaten them for centuries and saved the seeds to sow in successive years. If this had been the case, there surely would have been at least one botanical description of a small cabbage on a long stem, yet up until the 1800s there are no accurate records. It’s only from the mid-1850s that people in France and Belgium begin to mention what we know as a Brussels sprout, a small cabbage on a tall stem.