“Cabbage Was Once India’s Most Hated Vegetable — So How Did It Become a Daily Staple?”

From being dismissed as ‘unclean’ and ‘foreign’ to becoming poriyal, sabzi, thoran, pakora, and even paratha stuffing — the improbable journey of cabbage in India.

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🌱 Introduction: The Vegetable India Didn’t Want

If you walk into any Indian home today, you’ll find cabbage cooked as:

• Band gobi sabzi

• Kobi chi bhaji

• Cabbage thoran / poriyal

• Cabbage chana dal

• Cabbage pakora

• Cabbage paratha

• Cabbage kurma

But until barely 100–150 years ago, most Indians believed cabbage was:

• “smelly”

• “cold and phlegm-producing”

• “unsuitable for Brahmins”

• “foreign and impure”

• “fit only for Europeans”

Unlike cauliflower (which India actively adopted), cabbage had one of the slowest, strangest culinary acceptance curves in Indian history.

This is the story of how a hated colonial vegetable slowly entered Indian kitchens — one region at a time — and eventually spread across the nation.

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🥬 1. Cabbage Arrives in India (1700s–1800s):

A British Military Vegetable

Cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata) reached India through:

• Portuguese sailors (Goa, 1600s–1700s)

• British officers and cantonments (Madras, Bombay, Bengal Presidencies)

• Missionary gardens (Tamil Nadu, Bengal)

Cabbage was valued in Europe as anti-scurvy naval medicine.
So the British needed cabbage in the colonies for health reasons.

Where it grew first:

• Ooty

• Shimla

• Darjeeling

• Bangalore

• Coorg

• Pune cantonment

• Allahabad cantonment

Cabbage was grown in kitchen gardens of barracks, not in native Indian farms.

This is why Indians saw it as a ‘sahib vegetable’.

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🤢 2. Why Indians Rejected Cabbage (1800–1920)

Reason 1: The Smell

Cabbage’s sulfur compounds were described in early Indian writings as:

• “Dur-gandha leafy ball”

• “Kapālī patra with foul vapours”

• “A ghas (weed) eaten only by firangis”

Reason 2: Ayurvedic Suspicion

Traditional Ayurvedic and Siddha practitioners classified it as:

• Tamasik

• Gas-producing

• Kapha-aggravating

• Not suitable for Brahmins

• Not ideal for children or the elderly

Reason 3: No Cultural Precedent

Entire categories of dishes had no place for cabbage:

• No temple cuisine included it

• No royal Mughal texts mention it

• No traditional feast menus had it

• No community ritual cooking used it

Reason 4: Heat Sensitivity

Early cabbage wouldn’t grow in the plains, so Indians rarely saw it at all.

Reason 5: “Foreign” Label

In many parts of the country, elders called cabbage:

• Vilayati kobi (foreign cabbage)

• Angrezi gobi

• Sahib kobi

Cabbage was considered inauspicious for rituals in many Hindu communities.

As late as the 1920s, cookbooks in Hindi and Bengali described cabbage as “not recommended for Brahmins.”

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🌸 3. The First Indians to Embrace Cabbage:

Bengalis and Tamils — But for Totally Different Reasons

🌾 Bengal (1900–1930)

Bengali graduates returning from Europe had come to like cabbage.
Plus, Kolkata had:

• Anglo-Indian households

• Missionary schools

• Calcutta Botanical Garden

• Trade routes to Europe

Bengalis started using cabbage in:

• charchari

• ghonto

• shukto (rarely)

Bengali vegetarianism was flexible, so adoption came early.

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🌿 Tamil Nadu (1890–1930)

Cabbage entered Tamil cuisine through:

• Missionary schools

• British cantonments in Madras

• Christian and Anglo-Indian communities

• Hill-station gardens (Ooty)

Tamil cooks realized cabbage worked well with:

• tempering

• grated coconut

• mustard

• curry leaves

Thus, cabbage poriyal was born — and it remains one of the earliest fully Indianized cabbage dishes.

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🚂 4. The Railway Era (1920–1950):

Cabbage Slowly Spreads Across India

With the expansion of Indian Railways, hill-station vegetables reached the plains.

Cabbage began appearing in markets in:

• Pune

• Mumbai

• Delhi

• Lucknow

• Bangalore

• Chennai

• Nagpur

• Hyderabad

But urban Indians still saw it as a novelty vegetable.

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🥗 5. The Turning Point: World War I & II

Food Shortages Make Cabbage a Necessity

Two events dramatically increased cabbage consumption:

WWI (1914–1918)

Food rationing in British India encouraged hardy vegetables.
Cabbage was easy to grow and high-yielding.

WWII (1939–1945)

The British pushed Indian farmers to grow cabbage for:

• military canteens

• hospitals

• wartime rations

Millions of Indians tasted cabbage for the first time in these years.

This is when:

• band gobi sabzi

• cabbage with chana dal

• cabbage with peas

• cabbage soup in military kitchens

began.

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🍲 6. Mid-20th Century: Cabbage Becomes “Normal” (1950–1980)

After independence:

• Agricultural universities developed heat-tolerant cabbage

• Rural electrification improved vegetable storage

• Transport refrigeration improved

• Cities grew denser

• Middle-class kitchens expanded their menus

Cabbage entered:

• Maharashtra as kobi chi bhaji

• Gujarat as kobi nu shaak

• Karnataka as kosu palya

• Andhra as kobbari posina kosu curry

• Punjab as cabbage–matar

• UP-Bihar as band gobi tarkari

By the 1970s, cabbage was one of India’s top 10 vegetables.

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🍢 7. The Street-Food & Indo-Chinese Era (1975–2000)

Two revolutions sealed cabbage’s fate:

1. Cabbage Pakora

Cheap. Crispy. Everywhere.
Every tea stall had it.

2. Indo-Chinese Cuisine

Cabbage became essential in:

• noodles

• fried rice

• spring rolls

• gobi manchurian mixes

• momos

By the 1990s, cabbage was in almost every Indian restaurant kitchen.

It was no longer “foreign.”

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📚 8. References & Historical Sources

Some of the sources used include:

• Agri-Horticultural Society of Madras records (1880–1930)

• Calcutta Botanical Garden archives (1850–1900)

• Food shortages & rationing documents from WWI/WWII

• “Vegetable Introduction in Colonial India” – R. Guha (1996)

• British India cantonment garden manuals (1870s–1920s)

• Proceedings of Royal Horticultural Society (India chapters)

• Indian Council of Agricultural Research reports on cabbage (1950–1990)

• Early Indian cookbooks by Pak Suddhi, Bipradas Mukhopadhyay, and Krishna Rao

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🌟 Conclusion: How a Hated Vegetable Became a Beloved One

Cabbage may have had:

• no cultural roots

• no Ayurvedic approval

• no ritual value

• no historical presence

• a reputation for smell

• resistance from Brahmin households

And yet, in a century, it went from foreign weed to daily staple.

What changed?

• World wars

• Scientific breeding

• Missionary schools

• Urbanization

• Street food

• Indo-Chinese cuisine

Cabbage is a reminder that Indian cuisine is always evolving — often through unlikely, even unwanted, ingredients.