History Of The Carrot

The bright orange fleshy root vegetable we know today as the carrot is a far cry from its wild ancestor, a small tough and pale fleshed acrid root plant. Probably no one would be eating carrots if no one had taken an interest in improving their flavour. Luckily, some motivated Dutch people took carrots under their horticultural wings and taught them how to be sweet.

Carrots were originally purple or red, with a thin root. The species did not turn orange until the 1500's when Dutch agricultural scientists and growers used a mutant yellow carrot seed from North Africa to develop a carrot in the colour of the House of Orange, the Dutch Royal Family.