Sweet, Crispy, Crunchy Carrots!
Garden Week Fifteen 7/17/2018
Sweet, Crispy, Crunchy Carrots!
Pusa Rudhira Red: high in beta-carotene and lycopene and so yummy!
Whether you like orange, white, yellow, red, pink, or purple carrots, if you planted carrots this spring, you may be harvesting carrots now or soon. I myself harvested, some lovely St. Valery (orange), Parisienne (short, round, orange), Cosmic Purple (orange inside) and Pusa Rudhira Red (Coral red) carrots, so good!
You may have heard the story of King Orange and his love of all things orange. As I heard the story, carrots were cultivated through either a mistake or intention to satisfy this “King Orange”, an affectionate nickname giving to King William I, being the reason we know carrots to be orange today. Sounds more myth than truth. So, how much of this story is rumor and how much is true. Let’s find out.
Way back, an ancestor of the carrot has been identified through fossil records as far back as 55-34 million years ago. Shoo, that is a long time! Much later, as far back as 5,000 years ago, our ancestors were eating wild carrots throughout Europe and in now Afghanistan. Drawings, of what is believed to be a purple carrot, can found in ancient Egypt as far back as 2000 BC. Carrot seeds can be found in pharaoh crypts, but it not clear whether the carrot was cultivated as a food source. Romans, as with many foods, thought the carrot seeds had aphrodisiac properties. Parsnips, which are also white, appear to have easily been confused with carrots, due this it is difficult to trace the long history of the carrot.
As society developed, it was the seed, which was used first for medical purposes, as wild roots carrots may not have been as delectable as our current scrumptious carrots. History suggests that the bulbous nature of the carrot developed around the 9th century. The wild carrot doesn’t appear to have domesticated until the later Middle Ages. Additionally, it is not until the around the 11th century that Europeans begin to describe the carrot as being red or orange. This may have been due to hybridization.
The purple and yellow varieties appear to have been largely cultivated where the Himalayan and Hindu Kush mountains meet the Middle East and Russia areas, later migrating to the Mediterranean and Western Europe in the 11-14th centuries. And eventually finding its way to China, India and beyond in the 14-17th centuries.
Prior to the 16th Century, carrots remained largely purple and yellow, with the yellow being prefer for its flavor, and appearance when cooked. It was Dutch growers who developed the denser orange carotene carrot we know today. Modern genetics confirms the orange carrot is derived from these early yellow varieties.
While orange, due to carotene, carrot varieties are most common in grocers today, we can still find purple, black, white, yellow and red varieties. It is anthocyanins, which pigment the lovely purple and black carrot varieties. Lycopene, a type of carotene causes us to have red carrots. Yellow carrots contain xanthophylls, a pigment similar to beta-carotene. White carrots, still often confused with the parsnip, comes in more of a cream, ivory or golden-brown color, and are pigment free. Additionally, white carrots contain lipophilic (a carotene) and hydrophilic (phenolic compounds). Each of these pigments, carotenes and compounds have specific health benefits.
As for the story of cultivators growing the orange carrot as tribute to King Orange, or as one story suggests, to give thanks to King William I as tribute for him leading the Dutch revolt against Spain, this appears to have been a fiction started by a creative, possibly ambitious scholar.
No matter which carrot you prefer, whether roasted, mashed, hashed, or straight out of the garden, you can’t go wrong with this sweet, crispy, garden treat!
