Cauliflower is a flower head frozen before it could bloom
The white 'curd' we eat is a dense mass of undeveloped flower buds, an arrested inflorescence that arose around 2,500 years ago. Genomic work suggests it branched off from broccoli. Medieval Europeans called it Cyprus colewort, and Romanesco varieties grow their buds in striking fractal spirals.
Cauliflower belongs to Brassica oleracea, the same species that gave us cabbage, kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi. It was bred in the Mediterranean in antiquity, most likely from wild cabbage via broccoli, and three MADS-box genes appear to shape its curd. The name comes from Italian cavolfiore, cabbage flower. Pliny the Elder praised a vegetable called cyma as the tastiest of cabbages, probably the flowering heads of an earlier cultivated form.
Its European journey ran through Cyprus. Two medieval Arab botanists, Ibn al-Baitar and Ibn al-'Awwam, said it came from that island, and seed from Cyprus traded widely in Western Europe under the island's French Lusignan rulers into the 16th century. It probably entered Italy around 1490. The French agronomist Olivier de Serres wrote in 1600 that it was still rare in France, and it only became common at grand tables under Louis XIV. The British took it to India in 1822.
Breeders have produced four broad groups. The Italian type is the ancestral, most varied one. Germany developed Northern European annuals such as Erfurt and Snowball in the 18th century, France bred winter biennials in the 19th, and India created tropical cauliflowers like Early Patna from a now-abandoned Cornish type. Colours have their own stories: orange cultivars carry beta-carotene from a natural mutant found in a Canadian field, purple ones get their hue from anthocyanins also found in red wine, and green broccoflower and Romanesco reached US and European shops in the early 1990s.
It is fussier than cabbage, prone to small heads and poor curds, and grows best at daytime temperatures of 21 to 29 degrees Celsius; hot sun can tint heads red-purple. Raw cauliflower is 92 percent water with 25 calories per 100 grams and plenty of vitamin C. Boiling cuts its glucosinolates, whereas steaming or stir-frying does not. In 2024 cauliflower and broccoli together reached 27 million tonnes, 73 percent from China and India.
Source: Cauliflower
