Cabbage Facts

Get here some cabbage facts and many, many thoughts about cabbage, over the centuries. Dedicated to all who are - like me -cabbage lovers.

Cabbage facts from botanists

According to botanists cabbages are one of the most ancient of vegetables and they are still grown today. They were cultivated more than 4000 years ago.

Today three cabbage classifications

Today the really common and typical cabbage is the Capitata group. It has its name because of its Capita or Head shape and is classified into 3 types: green leaved, with smooth green leaves (the cabbage for our cabbage soup diet); savoy cabbage, with crinkled leaves and red cabbage, with purplish red leaves. The galician cabbage which is traditional in Portugal's Caldo Verde, is classified as Brassica oleracea, Tronchuda group. It doesn't belon to the main Capitata group. However, different varieties of cabbage were grown and cultivated in Asia from the earliest times. Get here more cabbage facts and cabbage types.

Long Cabbage history

Slavs began with the growth of cabbages back in the 9th century, after Roman and Greek colonists had brought them to the Black Sea region and they came in the north into Russia. Within a few centuries, Russian princes were paying tribute not only with jewels and racing horses, but also with garden plots planted with cabbage (kopusta).

Now cabbage is considered as Russia's national food. Russians eat some seven times as much cabbage as the average US citizen and it is often eaten at several meals of the day.

North America was reached much later

Then it was the Celts, apparently, who introduced cabbage to the lands they invaded-from the Mediterranean lands in the south to the British Isles in the north, and to the east as far as Asia Minor. It was, much later, introduced to North America by the early colonists. However, the variation of Napa cabbage, which was introduced into Japan from China in the 1860s, was quickly brought to America by immigrant laborers in the 1880s and 1890s.
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