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Not nearly as drastic as the cabbage case, but to me it’s also interesting that there are three ancestral, wild species of citrus fruit – mandarin, pomelo, and citron – and all the popular modern cultivars are hybrids of those three.
Centuries of selective breeding would turn me into different vegetables too
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How long ago did this happen?
1990s research at Novartis, not sure how quickly the new cultivars were adopted,.maybe someone else can chime in
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the sprouts trauma is the result of picking the wrong cooking method. I was so surprised when I tried baked sprouts for the first time (use a really host cast iron skilet for even better results) that I started to believe that every vegetable can be delicious as long as you bake it!
The modern cultivars literally taste different, it's not just cooking method. The bitter compounds were identified and bred out.
Just image-search "brassica memes" at your favorite engine.
You are probably aware of napa cabbage, but there's also Taiwan Cabbage (goes by other names of course...) https://www.westcoastseeds.com/products/taiwan-cabbage
It looks a lot like a flatter "green/european" cabbage. It's leaves and stems are finer and softer than a European cabbage, while still being pretty crunchy (as opposed to napa). Compared to European cabbage, you could actually just stir fry these.
Gai lan is just one variety of "Chinese broccoli" - there are multiple varieties with different stem thicknesses, and "branching ratios". This will let you pick to suit your preferred level of crunch and leaf area to coat with sauce =)
And finally, all of the bok choys are also part of this family.
If you look, you can straight up find the half way points between subfamilies https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/080bca1a659bf2f8b12bca1494c67...
If you liked this, you will be delighted to learn about the “Triangle of U”: the common brassicas are not just tetraploid, they are Frankensteinian mashups of earlier diploid species with different numbers of chromosomes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_U
