Taming the Devil's Testicles
Elizabeth Bird
Word Count 902
My father vowed they would never be cooked in our home. My mother agreed that the stink of a Dickensian workhouse could hardly have been worse. My brother startled me on social media by pronouncing them “the Devil’s testicles.”
My family’s disdain for the Brussels sprout was rooted in the uniquely British experience of 20th-century institutional dining, specifically the “school dinner.” There were no cafeterias, burgers – or indeed choice -- for us. In my all-girl school, we lined up in our brown uniforms to sit at long tables, each presided over by a senior “prefect.” Her job was to dish out food and send plates down the line in a dreary parody of family meals.
The culinary assaults weren’t confined to vegetables. My stomach still heaves when I recall the array of foul desserts served to us hapless schoolgirls. Tapioca, unfondly known as “frogspawn.” Tepid rice pudding, topped with a layer of rubbery skin. Otherwise edible sponges smothered in a sickening yellow sauce, in spite of my feeble entreaties from the far end: no custard, please! Worst of all was blancmange, a jiggling atrocity mixed from industrial-sized powder packets to create a viscous pink slime. With lumps.
But the worst indignities were reserved for produce, especially “greens.” The fetid stench of over-cooked cruciferous vegetables has suffused British childhoods since time immemorial. Cabbage, cauliflower, sprouts, broccoli – it didn’t make much difference. All appeared on one’s plate as sulfurous, green-tinged heaps. Sprouts were inarguably the most putrid. Ask any British Boomer.
Well, almost any. My husband has always had a strange affection for the boiled sprout. For our entire married life, he has insisted they be served at Christmas dinner, and that everyone must consume at least one. Our sons accepted this as a necessary, if deeply unpleasant, price to pay for the joys of turkey, roast potatoes, and stuffing.
I acquiesced because I understood the origins of his mysterious attachment. In our long-ago dating days, I had experienced his mother’s cooking, and lived. Her kitchen skills hewed close to the standard school template – jaw-breaking meat, complemented by shapeless greens and mounds of potatoes. He once claimed (jokingly?), that he was a teenager before he realized sprouts were separate vegetables. It all made sense. The sad confluence of school meals and mum’s home cooking had fostered a vegetative Stockholm Syndrome. On my first visit to his family, I watched aghast as his mother boiled tender sprouts for a staggering number of minutes, drained them through a sieve, then slapped a saucer on top to squeeze out water and produce the desired texture. No one else seemed to notice the cloying reek pervading the kitchen. I ate them. The things we do for love …
And so I had learned to live with the sprout -- at least once a year. My husband continued to cook them occasionally, progressing from the hard boil to a light steam that rendered them almost palatable. But I still ate them on sufferance, and always with the windows open.
A few years into the new century, I had my road to Damascus moment. I don’t recall exactly when I first tasted a roasted sprout, or why I agreed to do so. I suspect one of my American Millennial sons, who had quietly moved past their own childhood vegetable traumas. A revelation! What alchemy had transformed the mushy, green demon into a nutty, crisp delight, altogether free of the reek of sewage? Was that garlic? A touch of red pepper? A crispy edge to an al dente center?
Of course, I was woefully behind the trend. American chefs, unscarred by a British upbringing, led the Millennial generation to embrace the tiny cabbage. I set about catching up with the myriad variations that filled online cooking sites. Bacon, of course. Cheese: gruyere or parmigiana? Herbs: basil or thyme? Nuts: almonds or pecans? Balsamic vinegar or lemon? Recipes that would have appalled my late mother-in-law, with ingredients that would never have darkened her kitchen door. Brussels sprouts, yes. But married with prosciutto, parmesan, lemon, nuts, fresh herbs, and pasta, a food she permitted only in the form of canned spaghetti rings.
The sprout love affair peaked in 2021, by which time they had even conquered the U.K., with the Guardian pronouncing them “Britain’s favorite green vegetable.” They quickly populated the gastropubs that marked the birth of a British cuisine that has returned to the pastoral roots that once seemed lost forever, featuring veggies that engage one’s teeth!
Now it seems the sprout’s moment may be passing; I hear celeriac is on the rise. But I continue to play catch-up with the vindicated vegetable, as the dark memories recede into the mists of time. I feel there’s a lesson here somewhere, although I can’t quite put my finger on it. Somehow, biting into a tasty, seasoned sprout feels like a small victory – a defeat of the drab memory of the trestle tables and colorless comestibles of my youth. If sprouts can be reinvented, what’s next?
Well, blancmange, apparently. Hard to imagine, but I’m eager to try a startling new recipe that promises to erase memories of the lumpy 1960s horror. It’s concocted from fresh raspberries, ground almonds, cream, liqueur, and even “crystallized rose petals.” No powder packet in sight. The scars run deep, and I am skeptical. But if the devil’s testicles can be tamed, surely anything is possible?
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Elizabeth is a retired Professor of Anthropology. She has published seven books (most recently Surviving Biafra: A Nigerwife's Story), and now focuses on creative non-fiction. Her work appears in Under the Sun (winner, Readers' Choice Award 2022), Tangled Locks, Biostories, Streetlight, Ariel's Dream, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She placed third in the 2022 International Human Rights Art Festival's Creators of Justice Literary Awards.