Description
Aromata is a truimph of sensorial plant breeding - intensely selected for flavour and texture, yielding a slim, butter-yellow variety with a firm texture and intense aroma. A brave new world of culinary possibilities has been opened! Say goodbye to bland, spongy parsnips and hello to crisp, tender roots. This variety is well suited to eating raw - think remoulade and coleslaw.
Another great variety from Kultursaat breeders in Germany, developed from an accession from the IPK Leibniz gene bank. Read the breeders story below.
Sow: April-early May in May.
Kitchen: Pairs with savoury (bacon, marmite), fats (blue cheese, hard cheese), spices (nutmeg, cumin, anise), watercress.
Notes: Seeds are slow to germinate, keep soil damp. Thin seedlings to 5cm and keep weeded. Roots are sweetest when harvested after the first frost.
1g / ~200 seeds
Germ 92% Aug 25
The Story Behind the Variety...
Back in the 90s, breeders at Kultursaat noted a big inconsistency in flavour and texture within individual parsnip varieties. Single varieties yield roots which tasted completely different - some were bland, some sweet, some spongy and some bitter. So they embarked on a long journey to create a variety which excelled in flavour and texture. As a root vegetable and biennial seed crop, the challenge was to find a method to taste test each root whilst keeping them in good enough condition to replant and save seed from the following year. Their solution was to remove a small core from each parsnip to taste. Hundreds of parsnips were tested and the roots with the best eating qualities were replanted to save seed from. This was done for years until the variety was just right. The finishing flourish was to test the variety in different soil types, showing it could grow well in clay, loamy, sandy and upland soils.
https://www.kultursaat.org/dateien/zuechtung/sorten_englisch/aromata-en.pdf
