My first chou romanesco showed up in our CSA farm box several years ago, pale green and bristling with cone upon cone upon cone. “How beautiful,” I exclaimed to Paul. “I wonder whether it tastes like broccoli or cauliflower?” Turns out it’s somewhere in between, and I prefer the taste of broccoli. I’m almost glad that I didn’t love its taste, as I hated cutting into that head of romanesco, destroying its magically swirling patterns. I haven’t eaten one since, but I do ooh and ahh every time that I see a basket full of them at the farmers market. The form of this vegetable delights me like no other.
The romanesco is a beautiful example of naturally-occurring fractals, which are, much too simply put, patterns that are similar when viewed at a variety of scales. In a bit of synchronicity, I found that John Walker, the founder of the company whose CAD software I use at work every day, has an interesting page on fractal food, with a great set of photos showing the self-similarity of a head of romanesco at different scales.
Math. It’s what’s for dinner.
{ 3 comments }
As a girl who’s been known to take a photo or two of edibles, I loved this post. Beautiful, indeed!
Beootiful. I love this.
I’ve heard of “brocciflower” , sort of a green cauliflower but have never seen this. It’s gorgeous and John Walker certainly is an expert, not only in fractals and unusual vegetables but also in photography. Made me realize how much I really don’t know.
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