Ancient Beginnings
We usually associate the Etruscans with Italy, but these people, originally called the Rasenna, came from Asia Minor, now Turkey. It was in this region that the Rasenna began cultivating cabbages, the precursors to broccoli. These cruciferous vegetables were also grown along the Eastern Mediterranean. During the 8th century BCE, the Rasenna began their migration to Italy.
The ancient Rasenna actively traded with the Greeks, Phoenicians, Sicilians, Corsicans, and Sardinians. No doubt their broccoli cultivation spread throughout the region and eventually reached Rome when they settled in what is now known as Tuscany. It was the Romans who called these immigrants "Tusci" or "Etrusci" and referred to ancient Tuscany as Etruria.
The Romans were enamored with broccoli almost immediately. Pliny the Elder, an Italian naturalist and writer, 23 to 79 CE, tells us the Romans grew and enjoyed broccoli during the first century CE. The vegetable became a standard favorite in Rome where the variety called Calabrese was developed. The Calabrese is the most common variety still eaten in the United States today. Before the Calabrese variety was cultivated, most Romans were eating purple sprouting broccoli that turned green when cooked.
Apicius, the beloved cookbook author of ancient Rome, prepared broccoli by first boiling it and then bruising it "with a mixture of cumin and coriander seeds, chopped onion plus a few drops of oil and sun-made wine."
Long before the modern European cooks were serving broccoli with rich sauces, the Romans were presenting this vegetable with all sorts of creamy sauces, some cooked with wine, others flavored with herbs.
Roman Emperor Tiberius, 14 BCE to 37 BCE, had a son named Drusius who took his love of broccoli to excess. Excluding all other foods, he gorged on broccoli prepared in the Apician manner for an entire month. When his urine turned bright green and his father scolded him severely for "living precariously," Drusius finally abandoned his beloved broccoli.
Broccoli Visits Europe
Catherine de Medici of Tuscany may have been the first to introduce broccoli to France when she married Henry II in 1533, but the first mention of brocoli in French history is in 1560. Catherine arrived in France with her Italian chefs and armfuls of vegetables, including broccoli.
Miller's Gardener's Dictionary, in its 1724 edition, gave one of the earliest accounts of broccoli in the United Kingdom, referring to it as a stranger in England and calling it "sprout colli-flower" or "Italian asparagus." This account assumes that broccoli came from Italy.
When broccoli arrived in England in the early 18th century, no one spread the welcome mat. In fact, the English were soon turning their noses up. The French, too, had little enthusiasm for broccoli.
In 1883, Vilmorin, a French horticulturist, theorized that broccoli developed before cauliflower. He believed that when the ancient farmers were cultivating cabbages, they experimented with trying to develop the shoots rather than the tightly compacted heads. The result was the beginnings of broccoli cultivation that later lead to development of the highly prized white heads of cauliflower.
Broccoli Comes to America
Thomas Jefferson, often called the farmer president, was an avid gardener and collector of new seeds and plants of fruits and vegetables to arrive in the United States. In 1766 he began keeping detailed notes in his garden book of any seeds or seedlings planted in his extensive garden at Montecello, his home near Charlottesville, Virginia. He recorded his planting of broccoli, along with radishes, lettuce, and cauliflower on May 27, 1767.
As early as 1775, broccoli was described in A Treatise on Gardening by a Citizen of Virginia by John Randolph who writes, "The stems will eat like Asparagus, and the heads like Cauliflower." Despite this encouraging description of broccoli, the poor vegetable received nothing more than indifference in the United States.
The one exception was the early Italian immigrants who grew broccoli in their backyard gardens and frequently enjoyed this green treasure at the family table.
Although broccoli entered the United States more than 200 years ago, it was not adopted into popular circles until the D'Arrigo brothers, Stephano and Andrea, immigrants from Messina, Italy, came to the United States along with their broccoli seeds. The D'Arrigo Brothers Company began with some trial plantings in San Jose, California in 1922. After harvesting their first crop, they shipped a few crates to Boston.
Meeting with success, they went on to establish their burgeoning broccoli business with the brand name Andy Boy, named after Stephano's two-year-old son, Andrew. They advertised by supporting a radio program and featured ads for broccoli on the station. By the 1930s the country was having a love affair with broccoli. People were convinced that broccoli was a newly developed plant.
Though some folks devoured broccoli enthusiastically, many gave it a definitive thumbs down. The New Yorker magazine once published a cartoon some time between 1925 and 1930 of a desperate mother trying to convince her child to eat broccoli. The cartoonist was E.B. White who preferred to be anonymous. The caption read as follows:
"It's broccoli, dear."
"I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."
Throughout history, mention of broccoli seems to drop out of the historical accounts for long periods of time, indicating that it was so unpopular that it was simply not in use during those times. Broccoli
The Naming of Broccoli
It's not uncommon for horticulturists to bestow names upon newly developed fruits or vegetables that describe their appearance or their attributes. Broccoli has many strong branches or arms that grow from the main stem, each one sprouting a sturdy budding cluster surrounded by leaves. It was only fitting that the name broccoli came from the Latin bracchium, which means strong arm or branch.
Roman farmers called broccoli "the five green fingers of Jupiter."
In late 16th century England our familiar head of cabbage was called " cabbage," while the entire plant was called cabbage-cole, cole or colewort. To confuse matters further, broccoli and cauliflower were also called colewort.
Throughout its travels during 17th century Europe, broccoli was often confused with cauliflower as well as cabbage, the names often used interchangeably. It was even called broccoli cabbage or Calabrian cabbage.
