(WYTV) – When you were growing up, did you try to avoid Brussels sprouts at dinner? Maybe they tasted gross to you, and they did to many.
But things are different at the table today.
It’s not that you’ve grown up with more sophisticated tastes; it’s the Brussels sprouts that have changed.
Scientists in the Netherlands tinkered with them, making the sprouts bitter no longer.
National Public Radio reports that the sprouts began to change in the 1990s.
A Dutch scientist named Hans van Doorn, who worked at a seed and chemical company, figured out exactly which chemical compounds in Brussels sprouts made them bitter. The next step was to plant sprouts with the least amount of these chemicals and eventually cross-pollinate the chemicals out.
The old varieties began to disappear, keeping the best-tasting sprouts.
It took years, but it worked.
Then, word spread to professional chefs around the world, and the new sprouts took off, more in the United States than in Europe.
Once word got out about everyone’s least favorite vegetable from childhood tasting a bit different, the big-name chefs at the five-star restaurants began cooking them again.
People had no idea that their “new” Brussels sprouts lacked the bitterness chemicals; they had been pollinated out of them.
