You’re telling me these are Brussel Sprouts?

She-Hulk #5 (2022)

Written by Rainbow Rowell
Artwork by Luca Maresca
Colors by Rico Renzi

Chef’s Note:  Happy Eat Brussel Sprouts Day!

What’s worse, they even deserved their bad reputation. “They were just very bitter; a very strong bitter taste,” Bontadelli says.

This all started to change in the 1990s, and it began in the Netherlands, where Brussels sprouts have a simpler name: spruitjes. A Dutch scientist named Hans van Doorn, who worked at the seed and chemical company Novartis (the seed part is now called Syngenta), figured out exactly which chemical compounds in spruitjes made them bitter.

At that point, the small handful of companies that sell Brussels sprouts seeds started searching their archives, looking for old varieties that happen to have low levels of the bitter chemicals.
…

There are hundreds of these old varieties. The companies grew them in test plots, and they did, in fact, find some that weren’t as bitter. They cross-pollinated these old varieties with modern, high-yielding ones, trying to combine the best traits of old and new spruitjes. It took many years. But it worked. “From then on, the taste was much better. It really improved,” Sintenie says.