Brussels sprouts were rarely known outside of Belgium or northern France until the 17th century. The original recipe here is for newly sprouted cabbage hearts, which are difficult to find in today's modern markets. Brussels sprouts are a close substitute, and flavored with olive oil taste surprisingly different than most of us are used to.
Cabbages be of five sorts; the best are those that have been touched with frost and they are tender and soon cooked; and in frosty weather they must not be parboiled, but in rainy weather they must. White cabbages come at the end of August. Cabbage hearts at the end of the grape harvest. And when the heart of the cabbage, which is in the midst, is plucked off, you pull up the stump of the cabbage and replant it in fresh earth, and there will come forth from it big spreading leaves; and the cabbage takes a great deal of room and these cabbage hearts be called Roman cabbages and they be eaten in winter; and when the stumps be replanted, there grow out of them little cabbages which be called sprouts and which be eaten with raw herbs in vinegar; and if you have plenty, they are good with the outer leaves removed and then washed in warm water and cooked whole in a little water; and then when they are cooked add salt and oil and serve them very thick, without water, and put olive oil over them in Lent.
Le Ménagier de Paris, 1395; Gode Cookery
Siehe auch: Rosenkohl III