CARROTS Through History

We inherited the carrot from classical antiquity. The Romans called carrots by two names, carota and pastinaca, which has thoroughly confused some classical scholars, because pastinaca also meant parsnip, as well as wild carrot, or what we call Queen Anne’s lace. The Romans seem to have lumped things together according to how they were used or by certain visual similarities, and this is further complicated by the fact that both wild and cultivated carrots were used in cookery and medicine.

While the white carrot is native to Europe, the genetic origin of both yellow and violet carrots is believed to be Afghanistan. Both yellow and violet carrots were mentioned by Arabic writers and moved westward through Iran into Syria, and then into Spain by the 1100s. This could very well have been a reintroduction of something the Romans had known already. What’s certain is that by the early 1300s, the violet carrot was being raised in Italy, where it was first mentioned as an ingredient in a compote — stewed with honey and served as a dessert.

Three types of kitchen-garden carrots had evolved by the 1600s: the white brought in from the wild, the yellow tracing its origins to Afghanistan, and the). This was also the first carrot cultivar introduced into England. The deep orange, carotene-rich vegetable now associated with the word evolved in Holland during the late 1600s, when it first appeared in Dutch paintings of the period. The ‘Common Early Horn’ is mentioned in Dutch sources as early as 1740, as well as a long scarlet type. Both were sent to America by Dutch Mennonites and cultivated in Pennsylvania many years before they were introduced into other parts of Colonial America. Most culinary carrots evolved from these Dutch orange carrots, including the early American cultivar called ‘Long Orange.’