How the Dutch made the carrot orange

The humble carrot is a staple part of the diets of millions of people all over the world, from its role as an ingredient in soups, stews and even cakes in Europe to the mainstay of spicy salad and rice dishes in the Indian subcontinent. Although the carrot has been used in cooking for millennia, the familiar orange vegetable we all know and love only emerged a few hundred years ago in the seventeenth century thanks to selective breeding by canny Dutch farmers.





In the wild, carrots grow in sizes, shapes and colours that often vary wildly from the domesticated variety grown by farmers that we buy in supermarkets and vegetable shops. In North India, native carrots are any of a variety of shades of red, from pink to raspberry to a deep plum colour. Carrots grown around the Mediterranean and Near East in the Middle Ages were most often yellow or white while plants from places as varied as Afghanistan, China, Spain and North Africa were a deep shade of purple.





Although mutations existed in nature that produced orange carrots, most notably in Turkey, it wasn’t until the seventeenth century that the modern orange carrot began its ascendancy. Dutch carrot growers decided to cultivate a new strain of the vegetable in tribute to the first William of Orange, who had led the movement that secured independence for the Netherlands from Spain in the late sixteenth century. They combined various breeds of white, purple and red carrots and experimented until they had obtained the right shade. Most of the plants that led to the final strain actually originated from modern Iran.

Within the space of a generation, the Long Orange Dutch Carrot, as it came to be known, had displaced almost all of the traditional carrot breeds in Europe and the orange vegetable we know today became commonplace. The new carrot was first described in writing in 1721 by which point all other coloured carrots in Europe had vanished. The rich orange colour is due to an abundance of beta carotene pigment in the vegetables, the same substance that gives pumpkins, yams and sweet potatoes their distinctive colour.





In recent years, the growing trend for consuming locally produced and organic vegetables has seen something of a revival of older species of carrot, meaning that white and purple carrots are once again making an appearance on the shelves of wholefood stores and other specialist retailers. However, the Netherlands, the country that first developed the orange carrot, continues to go from strength to strength. Jump on a plane or take a train to Amsterdam, the Dutch capital, to see for yourself.





Isla Campbell writes for a digital marketing agency. This article has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.