40 Fun Facts About Kale

Lacinato kale's bumpy, dark blue-green leaves earned the Italian variety a nickname borrowed from which creature?

Dinosaur kale got its nickname because the bumpy leaves are said to resemble dinosaur skin. Italians know the same plant as cavolo nero and have grown it for centuries.

Before kale became a health-food star, which restaurant chain bought tons of it purely to dress salad bars?

Pizza Hut bought about 14,000 pounds of kale in 2012 just to decorate its salad bars. For most of the 20th century, Americans grew kale mainly for show rather than for eating.

The towering stalks of Jersey kale, which can top ten feet, were traditionally varnished and sold as what?

Walking sticks cut from Jersey kale stalks were selling at 30,000 a year by the early 20th century, many for export. Islanders stripped the lower leaves so the stems grew bare and straight.

A Vermont T-shirt artist's three-word kale slogan drew a trademark objection from which fast-food chain?

Chick-fil-A said the shirts infringed its own slogan, but the publicity sent sales soaring. The artist, Bo Muller-Moore, won federal trademark protection in 2014.

In which country is aojiru, a famously unpleasant kale juice, a common punishment on TV game shows?

Japan's aojiru was devised in 1943 by an army doctor trying to stretch his family's meagre wartime diet. He later judged kale the best leaf for the job.

Growers often delay picking kale because its leaves turn sweeter after which kind of weather?

A heavy frost makes kale taste sweeter, and the plant is tough enough to survive temperatures as low as −15 °C. That hardiness made it a winter staple across northern Europe.

Which pop star danced on a hotel balcony in a sweatshirt reading Kale in the 2014 video for "7/11"?

Beyoncé shot the clip like a home video in a Los Angeles hotel suite, and it went on to win Video of the Year at the 2015 BET Awards.

Kalettes, the frilly mini greens that reached British shops in 2010, are a hybrid of kale and which vegetable?

Brussels sprouts were bred with kale by England's Tozer Seeds, and the result first went on sale under the name Flower Sprouts.

In Scottish folklore noted by Robert Burns, pulling a kale stalk with eyes shut on which night foretold a spouse?

Halloween sent young Scots out hand in hand to pull the first stalk they touched; its size and shape were said to predict a husband or wife, and any soil on the root meant a fortune.

A 100-gram serving of raw kale supplies more than three times the daily value of which nutrient?

Vitamin K runs at 3.7 times the daily value in 100 grams of raw kale. Plants make it for photosynthesis, which is why dark leafy greens are so rich in it.

Caldo verde, a green broth of potato and finely shredded kale, is a national favourite of which country?

Portugal named caldo verde one of its Seven Wonders of Gastronomy after a public vote in 2011. The soup comes from the northern Minho region and turns up at weddings and birthdays.

Which Irish dish of mashed potatoes, butter and milk is traditionally mixed with kale or cabbage?

Colcannon probably takes its first syllable from cál, the Irish word for kale. The cheap, year-round dish is a favourite on Saint Patrick's Day.

Boerenkool stamppot, curly kale mashed with potatoes, is a traditional winter dish of which country?

The Netherlands serves the mash with rookworst, and diners often press a little hollow into the top to hold a pool of gravy.

The cabbage king crowned at a North German Grünkohlessen kale dinner must take on which duty?

Organising next year's feast falls to the king, who may be the guest who ate the most portions or put on the most weight during the meal.

Kohlfahrt, a North German winter custom, pairs a kale-and-sausage meal at an inn with which activity beforehand?

A country walk comes first, often with outdoor games and with drinks handed out from a handcart along the way.

Which future US president listed lacinato kale among the plants in his Virginia garden in 1777?

Thomas Jefferson also grew sea kale, a different coastal plant, at Monticello between 1820 and 1825.

Ribollita, the Tuscan bread soup made with cavolo nero kale, has a name meaning what in Italian?

Reboiled describes how cooks reheated the previous day's leftover vegetable soup with stale bread. The dish was first documented in a 1910 Italian cookbook.

Which American restaurant chain's zuppa toscana pairs kale with Italian sausage, bacon, potatoes and cream?

Olive Garden's version is a long way from the Tuscan original, a bean soup said to have begun as a thrifty way to use up stale bread.

East Africa's kale-like sukuma wiki greens take their Swahili name from which thrifty phrase?

Push the week is the literal meaning: the greens are affordable and available all year, so they help a household's food last. They are usually eaten with ugali, a maize-flour staple.

Kale, broccoli, radishes and wasabi belong to a plant family commonly named after which condiment crop?

Mustard gives the family its everyday name, the mustards, though botanists call it Brassicaceae. Turnips, arugula and bok choy are members too.

Kale's high level of a clotting nutrient can interfere with which widely prescribed blood thinner?

Warfarin works by blocking the body's recycling of that nutrient, so patients are advised to keep their intake of leafy greens as steady as possible.

Kale is a cruciferous vegetable, a label that refers to which shape formed by its four flower petals?

A cross is what the four petals resemble, and the old family name Cruciferae is Neo-Latin for cross-bearing. The flowers of wild cabbage, kale's ancestor, are yellow.

In Scots dialect, where kail became a byword for food itself, being off one's kail means feeling what?

Too ill to eat is the sense, because kale was such a mainstay of the traditional Scottish diet that the word came to stand for a meal.

Which country's traders carried a flat-leaved red kale to Canada in the 19th century, lending the variety its name?

Russia's traders took the hardy kale to Canada, and it reached the United States later in the same century.

Selecting kale-like plants for ever wider stems produced which bulbous vegetable?

Kohlrabi is the same species as kale, bred for a swollen stem instead of leaves. Its German name means cabbage turnip, though the true turnip is a different species.

Which slim-stalked vegetable, sold since the 1990s, is a hybrid of broccoli and Chinese kale, also called gai lan?

Broccolini took the Sakata Seed Company eight years to develop by conventional breeding. The aim was a milder vegetable that could grow in hotter climates.

Which leafy staple of the American South shares kale's cultivar group and is eaten on New Year's Day for luck?

Collard greens sit with kale in the Acephala group, and Southerners eat them with black-eyed peas and cornbread in the hope of wealth to come.

Kale is rich in lutein, a yellow pigment that the human body concentrates in which part of itself?

The retina holds lutein in the macula, the small central patch responsible for colour vision. Animals cannot make the pigment and get it only by eating plants.

Variants of the TAS2R38 taste-receptor gene help explain why some people find kale and broccoli especially what?

Bitter is the taste the receptor picks up from compounds called glucosinolates, so people with a sensitive version of the gene may come to avoid such vegetables.

Which cooking method lowers kale's glucosinolate content, while the other three cause no significant loss?

Boiling lowers the glucosinolates and diminishes most of kale's other nutrients too, though plenty of its manganese survives the pot.

The Kailyard school of sentimental Scottish fiction, named after the cottage kale patch, included which famous author?

J. M. Barrie wrote Kailyard tales such as A Window in Thrums before he created Peter Pan. Critics coined the label in 1895 as a put-down for cosy stories of rural life.

USDA plant explorer David Fairchild is credited with bringing kale to Americans from which Adriatic country?

Croatia grew kale widely at the time because it was cheap and easy to raise, though Fairchild himself disliked cabbages of every kind.

Kale belongs to the Acephala group of cabbage cultivars, a Greek name that means what?

Without a head sums up kale, whose central leaves never close into a tight ball as a cabbage's do. That keeps it closer in looks to the wild plant than its relatives are.

Mrs Beeton's Victorian cookbook classed the blanched shoots of sea kale, a coastal plant, as a type of which vegetable?

Asparagus was the comparison: cooked and buttered, the pale shoots were said to taste much like it. At nine pennies a basket, sea kale was among the dearest vegetables of its day.

Astronauts on the International Space Station have grown red kale in a NASA plant chamber with which nickname?

Veggie, short for Vegetable Production System, is about the size of a carry-on bag and typically holds six plants.

Wild cabbage, the ancestor of kale, shuns competition and grows naturally in which rugged habitat?

Sea cliffs of limestone and chalk, like those on both sides of the English Channel, suit a hardy plant that cannot stand crowding by rivals.

Curly-leaved and flat-leaved forms of kale-like cabbage were already growing in which country by the 4th century BC?

Greece is where the philosopher Theophrastus described curly, smooth and wild types. The Romans later knew such plants as Sabellian kale.

Chinese kale, or gai lan, is classically steamed and served at dim sum restaurants with which savoury condiment?

Oyster sauce is the classic topping for the steamed stems, while a quick stir-fry with garlic is the other common treatment.

Kale shares its Latin root, caulis, with the first half of which shredded-cabbage side dish's name?

Coleslaw arose in the 18th century as an English take on a foreign phrase for cabbage salad, and its first syllable goes back to the same Latin word as kale.

A rape kale variety is named after which term for the lean spell of the year when little else could be harvested?

Hungry gap is the old farming name for that stretch, and kale's ability to keep growing through the cold made it one of the few fresh crops on hand.