Broccoli is mentioned in an ancient text about the Emperor Tiberius who is said to have teased his son Drusas, calling him greedy for eating so much broccoli.
It was improved upon by the Romans and later-day Italians and is now cultivated throughout the world. It was said to have come to Italy in the seventeenth century from eastern Mediterranean, Crete or Cyprus.
It is believed that the early selection of the plant for its edible flower heads may have been done somewhere in Asia Minor, and that sea-going traders brought the plant to the Italian peninsula where further development took place.
Colonists introduced broccoli to the United State in the early eighteenth century and popularized by Italian immigrants who brought this prized vegetable with them to the New World.
In 1923 D’Arrigo Bros. Company planted trial field of Italian sprouting broccoli near San Jose, California and later shipped the first ice-packed to eastern markets via railroad in the fall of 1924.
Recipes for broccoli appear in a number of cookbooks found in America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cooker Made Palin and Easy.
The name probably is derived from brocco, Italian for twisted thread or shoot, or it may be a corruption of the Latin brachium, which means arm.
History of broccoli
