 Broccoli
is a plant
of the
Cabbage
family.
Roman
references
to a cabbage
family
vegetable
that may
have been
broccoli are
less than
perfectly
clear.
The Roman
natural
history
writer,
Pliny the
Elder, wrote
about a
vegetable
which might
have been
broccoli.
Some
vegetable
scholars
recognize
broccoli in
the cookbook
of Apicius.
Broccoli was
certainly an
Italian
vegetable,
as its name
suggests,
long before
it was eaten
elsewhere.
Its first
mention in
France is in
1560, but in
1724
broccoli was
still so
unfamiliar
in England
that Philip
Miller's
Gardener's
Dictionary
(1724
edition)
referred to
it as a
stranger in
England and
explained it
as "sprout
colli-flower"
or "Italian
asparagus".
In the
American
colonies,
Thomas
Jefferson
was also an
experimentive
gardener
with a wide
circle of
European
correspondents,
from whom he
got packets
of seeds for
rare
vegetables
such as
tomatoes,
noted the
planting of
broccoli at
Monticello
along with
radishes,
lettuce, and
cauliflower
on May 27,
1767.
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