It was an agricultural expert which introduced the kohlrabi into English. Charles Vancouver was born in Holland to British parents and spent a lifetime in agricultural pursuits. He was a farmer’s apprentice in Norfolk, investigated drainage of bog land in his first job in Ireland, before moving to Kentucky to supervise 53,000 acres of land.
The rest of his life he continued in this way, investigating, analysing and writing about agriculture in the UK, Holland and the USA. The British Board of Agriculture commissioned various experts to write an assessment of the current status of land and farming in various counties in England. They were entitled General Views. Vancouver wrote on Cambridge, Hampshire and Devon and gave a detailed description of farming at the beginning of the 1800s.
In his book on Devon which appeared in 1808, he devotes a chapter to Khol Rabi. He describes kohlrabi as an “above-ground turnip cabbage” as being “remarkably sweet” . The rabbits enjoyed eating them, picking them about from turnips which were not touched at all.
The experimental planting of kohlrabi was also recorded in the same year by the reformer John Curven in his book Hints on the Economy of Feeding Stock and Bettering the Condition of the Poor.
As it sounds, the word kohlrabi originates from German (Kohl – cabbage and Rübe – turnip). Germany, Austria and India are key consumer countries.
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