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| Colorful Carrots |
The other
day I watched a historical documentary on the Stuarts (are you surprised?) when
a lady marched through a market and stopped at boxes of carrots. She said the
carrot started out purple, but if you match it with another color, the new crop
is yellow. You match it with another color, and that crop of carrots is orange.
This was done in honor of William of Orange. I thought, “What?” But intrigued,
I went in search of the carrot.
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| Purple Carrot |
The Greeks
and Romans cooked with white carrots. Asia Minor peoples threw purple
and yellow carrots in their pots. They were used in medicines, and carrot seeds have been
found in these areas from as long ago as 5000 years.
They think
carrots originated in the Himalayas and Hindu Kush and were transported across
the mountains via the Silk Road. A popular item, merchants stored them on ships
and transported the root all over the world.
They were
once very bitter but with our technology, we’ve made them into a fat and tasty
vegetable. I’d wager they don’t taste anything like what the original peoples
ate. I even heard those beautiful, succulent carrots you buy in bags, have been
whittled down from unseemly, unsaleable roots. I can imagine all the carrot
debris everywhere. What do the manufacturers do with all that waste? Probably
something we don’t want to know. On a positive note, maybe they crush it into
carrot juice.
Okay, now I’ll
confuse you.
Asiatic carrots
are often purple/black, although some are yellow.
Western
carrots are generally orange, red or white, some of which may have developed
from mutations, which cooks seem to prefer because the darker pigments do not
leech into the broth.
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| White & Red Carrots |
I don’t
understand how the carrot became so popular when the original roots were long
and thin, tough as nails to eat, and bitter as the day is long. It is not
something I would take in hand and say, “I’ll make this better.” But man as a
species is quite amazing. There’s a lot out there that may or may not have been
a good idea to cultivate and expand, but we have them and we eat them, anyway.
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and
wikicommons, public domain.
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